Houston. Thomas Block Humery. Alberto Books

Posted in Artist Book, photography, travel on December 2nd, 2023
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« Houston » n’est pas un livre comme les autres. Par le biais particulier de l’autobiographie, il nous invite à parcourir, ou à imaginer, la moins connue des grandes mégalopoles américaines. À côté de Los Angeles, New York, Miami ou Chicago, cette ville du Texas n’a rien de la ville de carte postale. Elle en est peut-être même l’antithèse avec ses quartiers très étendus, ses autoroutes qui la divisent, pour ne pas dire la tranchent et son « downtown » accablé par la chaleur en été. Pourtant c’est là que Thomas Block Humery nous invite à concevoir la ville au-delà des considérations urbanistiques, socio-économiques ou culturelles, en mettant l’accent sur la dimension intime comme dynamique de connaissance. Il voit la ville avant tout comme un lieu de projection de soi validé par l’amour, l’ambition, la réalisation de soi, le confort esthétique et d’autres grandes espérances difficilement quantifiables.

La ville est ici liée au sentiment et à l’émotion. Selon cette proposition, l’auteur dépasse les descriptions de géographie humaine, faites de courbes démographiques, de statistiques économiques ou de taux d’activité, pour ne conserver que la perspective individuelle faite de ressenti, d’adaptation, de partage, de liens possibles, de visions changeantes, traversée par la contingence, la délicatesse voire la fragilité de l’expérience. L’espace urbain se déploie selon les modalités de la rencontre qui joue un rôle catalyseur et accélérateur. Houston devient le théâtre d’une interaction où la connaissance de l’espace va de pair avec l’intensification de la relation.

L’auteur revient dix ans après cet épisode vécu et fait le point sur cette connaissance spécifique où des habitudes s’étaient enracinées et où des liens s’étaient noués. Houston est alors un décor de théâtre où des scènes réelles se sont jouées, un décor qui a lui-même changé, transformé par les forces inhérentes et spécifiques des villes américaines pour lesquelles une décennie est déjà une fraction importante du temps. La ville et son visiteur se retrouvent comme deux amants qui n’arrivent plus vraiment à communiquer. On dit que les criminels reviennent toujours sur les lieux de leur crime. Qu’en est-il de la personne qui revient sur les lieux d’une histoire passée ?

Le projet pose ici la question : peut-on montrer ça en images ? La réponse est ambiguë, avec des oui et des non, car les images, malgré leurs limites, peuvent traduire la présence et l’absence, le rêve et la réalité, le passé et parfois la précarité du présent. Thomas Block Humery s’amuse à rendre la ville de Houston labyrinthique, parcellaire, géométriquement abstraite et peut-être même chimérique, comme lorsque l’on veut recoller un bout de vie à un autre.

Le livre est plein de poésie et de profondeur où il est question d’un photographe qui ne voit plus que des métaphores plutôt que le réel. Le projet devient une autofiction et la réponse qu’il propose prend la forme d’une œuvre d’art. Il est question de relations à distance, de publicités détournées d’un âge d’or, de façades de buildings qui font écran, de temps qui passe, du souvenir de “Paris, Texas”, de la flore locale, d’appareils photo et de négatifs vierges. La ville devient une utopie, avec des souvenirs qui reviennent et des futurs qui se dessinent.

Le projet prend une place particulière aujourd’hui à l’heure où beaucoup d’entre nous sont tentés d’aller vivre « ailleurs », où une nouvelle forme de nomadisme s’implante dans des modes de vie changeants. L’expérience montre ici un phénomène de fragmentation, où la vie n’est plus une simple ligne droite mais une succession de moments où l’enracinement semble se faire à différents coins du globe, dans une sorte d’atomisation des destins pris dans une multitude de potentialités. Thomas Block Humery ne tranche pas sur la morale de l’histoire. Il accepte les espoirs comme les échecs et les prend comme les ferments d’une vie qu’il préfère romanesque que totalement maîtrisée.

La description de « Houston » ne saurait être complète sans la mention texte de l’auteur qui fait partie du projet, un texte en forme de confession qui contextualise le corpus d’images et qui fait entrer, pas à pas, le lecteur dans une sphère secrète où chacun peut un peu se retrouver.

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“Houston” is not like any other book. Through the unique approach of autobiography, it invites us to explore, or imagine, the lesser-known of the major American metropolises. Compared to Los Angeles, New York, Miami, or Chicago, this Texan city has nothing of the postcard-perfect image. It may even be the opposite with its sprawling neighborhoods, highways that divide, or dare I say, cleave it, and its downtown area sweltering in the summer heat. Nevertheless, it is here that Thomas Block Humery invites us to conceive the city beyond urban, socio-economic, or cultural considerations, emphasizing the intimate dimension as a dynamic of knowledge. He perceives the city primarily as a place of self-projection validated by love, ambition, self-fulfillment, aesthetic comfort, and other hard-to-quantify aspirations.

In this perspective, the city is closely tied to feelings and emotions. With this proposition, the author transcends human geography’s descriptions consisting of demographic curves, economic statistics, or labor participation rates, retaining only the individual perspective shaped by emotions, adaptation, sharing, potential connections, and ever-changing visions influenced by contingency, delicacy, and the fragility of experience. The urban space unfolds through the dynamics of encounters, acting as a catalyst and an accelerator. Houston becomes the stage for an interaction where understanding of space goes hand in hand with the deepening of relationships.

The author revisits this specific knowledge a decade after the experience, reflecting on entrenched habits and forged bonds. Houston serves as a backdrop where real scenes played out, a backdrop that has changed, transformed by the inherent and specific forces of American cities for which a decade is a significant fraction of time. The city and its visitor reunite like two lovers who struggle to communicate. They say that criminals often return to the scene of their crime. What about someone who revisits the scenes of a past story?

The project raises the question: can this be conveyed through images? The answer is ambiguous, with both yes and no, because images, despite their limitations, can convey presence and absence, dreams and reality, the past, and sometimes the precariousness of the present. Thomas Block Humery playfully turns the city of Houston into a labyrinth, fragmented, geometrically abstract, and perhaps even chimerical, as if trying to piece together one fragment of life with another.

The book is replete with poetry and depth, featuring a photographer who sees metaphors more than reality. The project evolves into autofiction, and the response it offers takes the form of an artwork, touching on long-distance relationships, advertisements diverted from a golden age, building facades that act as screens, the passage of time, memories of “Paris, Texas,” local flora, cameras, and blank negatives. The city becomes a utopia with returning memories and emerging futures.

The project holds a particular place today, as many of us are tempted to live “elsewhere,” where a new form of nomadism is emerging in changing lifestyles. The experience here reveals a phenomenon of fragmentation, where life is no longer a simple straight line but a succession of moments, where rooting oneself seems to occur in various corners of the globe, in a kind of atomization of destinies caught in a multitude of potentialities. Thomas Block Humery does not pass judgment on the moral of the story. He embraces hopes and failures, regarding them as the ferment of a life that he prefers to be more romantic than entirely controlled.

The description of “Houston” would not be complete without mentioning the author’s text, which is part of the project, a confessional text that contextualizes the image corpus and gradually immerses the reader into a secret sphere where everyone can find a piece of themselves.

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Finlandia. Gerardo Montiel Klint. librosmorg

Posted in Artist Book, photography on December 1st, 2023
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“The explorer of himself navigates in a sea that does not exist. He steers the small rowboat towards the rocky coastline, guided by the roar of the breaking waves.” 

Photographs by Gerardo Montiel Klint
Texts by Mauricio Ortiz and Rebeca González

100 copies

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 I did not plan to stop there but. Iga Mroziak.

Posted in Artist Book, photography on November 29th, 2023
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I did not plan to stop there but is a collection of photographs that offers a closer look at scenes from everyday life.
Both unknown people and random objects become the target of careful observation. Put in the spotlight (although still in their original context), they become a detail under a magnifying glass − and turn into (Insta)stories about themselves. They don’t pretend to be anything other than what they
really are. An interesting slice of reality. A modern melancholy.
By using an iPhone camera to get closer to my surroundings, I am able to capture details that are easily overlooked without interfering with them. I work organically: sometimes I instinctively take photos with my phone, even if I have already taken them with the camera. And then I immediately make them public, as proof of the existence of ordinary beauty, as something that gives me a feeling of comfort and
elation. It is a process that has accompanied me since my beginnings with photography.
These photos represent life’s great journey as well as small daily trips, with all the unscheduled stops I make along the way. They reflect the experience of finding the extraordinary while exploring the real.

Edited and designed by Iga Mroziak
Photographs, poem, drawings by Iga Mroziak
Softcover
Self-publishing
First edition (2023)
Language: English, Polish
Pages: 176
Proofreading: Piotr Mroziak

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Mike Kelley. Ghost and Spirit. Mike Kelley. Dilecta; Bourse de Commerce

Posted in art, Artist Book, exhibition catalogue, Monograph on November 11th, 2023
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Catalogue published on the occasion of the retrospective exhibition devoted to the artist Mike Kelley, Ghost and Spirit, presented at the Bourse de Commerce (Paris) from 13 October 2023 to 19 February 2024, in collaboration with the Tate Modern (London).

One of the most influential artists of the late 20th century, Mike Kelley is an unclassifiable visionary who has explored notions that are still at the heart of contemporary debates: collective and individual memory, gender and social class relations, conflicting tastes, etc. The Detroit-born artist is interested in the way in which individual subjectivity is shaped by family and institutional power structures in post-modern capitalist American society.

In his performances, drawings, sculptures, paintings, installations and videos, he has consistently portrayed the role of the artist and the way in which the artist appears and disappears, like a ghost or spirit whose influence persists through the ages.

With texts by John C. Welchman, Laura López Paniagua, Cauleen Smith, Suzanne Lacy, Catherine Wood, Jean-Marie Gallais, Glenn Phillips, Fiontán Moran, Jack Halberstam, Marie de Brugerolle and Hendrik Folkerts.

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PAL-WOL. Renata Kats. Berlin Photobook Distribution

Posted in Artist Book, photography on November 9th, 2023
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Photography 

The subject of love: it’s a universal concept. At the time when I started my research, was in desperate need of a story that would help reshape my perception of love in a modern world. When I began my search, many stories I encountered lacked sincerity and depth. I was searching for an out of this world pulsating energy. Then I met Pierre and Jiyeonne, a French-Korean couple who, once they met on a dating app on the 21st of August 2018, have not left each other’s sides since.

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Planet A. Kati Gausmann. Textem Verlag

Posted in Artist Book, geography, photography, poetry, writing on November 4th, 2023
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Planet A versammelt Werkserien der letzten fünfzehn Jahre zu Bewegungen der Erde und der Elemente, die sich in äußerst unterschiedlichen Zeiträumen und Ausmaßen vollziehen und so in jeweils anderer Relation zum menschlichen Maß in Raum und Zeit stehen. Das Buch gibt einen sinnlichen Einblick in die künstlerischen Prozesse Kati Gausmanns, die natur- und geisteswissenschaftliche Studien, Atelierarbeit und in Fieldwork vor Ort eingesetzte künstlerische Mittel verbinden. Auf poetische Weise vermitteln sich die unterschiedlichen Landschaften, in denen die Werke entstanden sind, und die ihnen zugrunde liegenden natürlichen Prozesse. Ein Essay von Hanne Loreck entfaltet die Komplexität dieser künstlerischen Praxis, ordnet sie in den aktuellen Diskurs ein und zeigt Bezüge zu aktuellen Fragen des Planetaren und des Anthropozäns auf. 

Planet A presents work series from the last fifteen years that focus on the movements of the earth and of the elements which occur across vastly different scales of age and scope, thus establishing a distinct relationship with our human measure of time and space. The book provides a sensual insight into Kati Gausmann’s artistic practice, which combines studies in natural science and the humanities, studio work, and artistic methods deployed in on-site fieldwork. The various landscapes in which the works were created and the natural processes underlying them are poetically conveyed. Hanne Loreck’s essay unfolds the complexity of this artistic practice, situates it within the current discourse, and highlights topical questions related to the planet and to the Anthropocene. Fotografie: Miranda Blennerhassett, Angela von Brill, Astrid Busch, Carsten Eisfeld, Barbora Gallová, Kati Gausmann, Michael Jezierny, Katharina Pöhlmann, Eric Tschernow, Martin Zellerhoff

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Theft is Vision – Dirty Books. Dan Mitchell. Edition Patrick Frey

Posted in Artist Book, collage, photography on November 3rd, 2023
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The works in this publication were commissioned by Fredi Fischli and Niels Olsen. I was asked to remake each of artist’s work as ‘posters’, with the direction that they should be at least 85% ‘Dan Mitchell’. The joke was to appropriate the appropriators. Additionally I included, as subjects, the architect of the show’s design, Petra Blaisse / Inside Outside, and also the curators themselves.

Things got a little confusing between 2020 and 2021 as there were 3 book projects on the go at the same time – the official catalogue for Theft is Vision, the book ‘Dan Mitchell Posters’* (both designed by Teo Schifferli and an unofficial lolz style book/ catalogue of the posters now published here. Only the book of my posters made it to print. Cultural fashion shifts and Covid put paid to the desire to produce a physical publication, appropriation, as a subject didn’t seem to be cool anymore.

Pocket Guide: Dan Mitchell Posters

With: Casima von Bonin. Maurizio Cattelan, Maria Eichhorn, Marie Louise Eman, Syvie Fleury, Isa Genzken, Richard Hamilton, Charline von Hey, Pierre Joseph, Valentina Liernur, Dan Mitchell, Mathieu Malouf, Malcolm Morley, Albert Oehlen, Betty Tompkins and Gili Tal.
Exhibition architecture by Petra Blaise / Inside Outside

The notion of ‘Theft’ establishes a site of investigation. This exhibition examines the desire to appropriate – a fundamental theme in the production of art. Throughout art there are typologies that ensue from the appropriation of motifs or of other works of art. As just one form of aggressive theft, the act of citation was already a cultural strategy long before Appropriation Art manifested itself.

At Luma Westbau the following questions are posed from a contemporary perspective:
What are the genres established through appropriation today? What does stealing mean for artistic production? Is it an act of removal and subtraction? Or can it be a productive strategy as suggested by the art history of Appropriation Art? In the context of this exhibition, ‘Theft is presented as dialogues and translations between artists. In essence, the exhibition confronts two opposing concepts in appropriation: the desire to appropriate as the idolization of sources or as an attack on and subversion of the established.

The typology of the enfilade a suite of rooms in grand architecture – is reconfigured in translucent plastic inthe exhibition design by Petra Baisse / inside Outside and inserted into the White Cube spacent encloses formative typologies of works of art productively used by numerous artists. The investigation leads to a wild variety of iconic and unexpected results: reconfigurations of Marcel Duchamp’s readymades, Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square, Lucio Fontana’s Concetto Spaziale, Jasper John’s Target, Fra Angelico’s Annunciation, Jacques-Louis David’s Napoleon Crossing the Alps, book illustrations by Bernard Buffet, and Courbet’s L’Origine Du Mode or variations on shopping-bag installations. By gathering these typologies together, the exhibition reveals and contrasts different appropriation strategies in art, and invites to discern and encounter sources, counterparts, and sundry partners in crime.

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Ängelen. Peter Winklund.

Posted in architecture, Artist Book, editions, photography, poetry, sculpture on October 31st, 2023
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This is a limited edition photo book in 200 copies with images by Peter Wiklund and texts from poems by the Swedish writer Willy Granqvist (b. 1948, d. 1985). 

The Swedish word Ängelen means “the angel” (but with an elderly spelling).

Each book is numbered and signed, and has a small unique, handmade cyanotype on the cover.

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Nus Fleurs Fleuristes. Julien Carreyn. September Books

Posted in Artist Book, Artist's book, editions, photography on October 27th, 2023
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Dehors
par Amélie Lucas-Gary
Nus Fleurs Fleuristes
Nus Fleurs Fleuristes II
NFF III
Voyage au Pouliguen
Grasse en Avril
Les Anciennes Auberges de Jeunesse
Nu aux Pavillons-sous-Bois

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Display. Paula Gehrmann, Simone Vollenweider. Verlag Marian Arnd

Posted in architecture, art, Artist Book, design, exhibitions, Monograph on October 17th, 2023
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Display ist kein objekt, keine skulptur. Architektur oder performance display ist objekt, skulptur. Architektur und performance. Display bewegt sich zwischen kunst. handwerk und design. Display ist modularer rahmen und container. Display ist immer eine zusammenarbeit. Display ist plattform und gegenüber für interaktionen. Display macht unsichtbare strukturen und prozesse greifbar und dokumentiert gleichzeitig diesen vorgang. display ermöglicht wechselseitiges betrachten. ohne zu beschreiben. display nutzt kurzfristige verhältnisse. Display ist ein archiv der gegenwart. display ist werkzeug und macht raum zur werkstatt. Display baut alternativen raum. Display ist mein verständnis von kunst. display bedeutet für mich freundschaft und netzwerk. supportstruktur und suche nach handlungspotenzial. Display ist reaktion auf ökonomische zwänge des kunstbetriebs und der kunstproduktion. display ist ein anti-monument.

DISPLAY 2022 – 2016 gibt Einblicke in Paula Gehrmanns bewusst offene und auf Kooperation angelegte künstlerische Praxis. Die darin vorgestellten Arbeiten und Texte thematisieren das Verhältnis zwischen Kunst und Design, Inklusion und Assistenz und dem Handlungsspielraum künstlerischer und kuratorischer Rahmung.

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