Luo Yang is considered the shooting star of the current Chinese photo scene. This catalogue combines examples from her main works since the beginning of her career, intertwining them as they were personal stories.
Since 2007 the extensive series “GIRLS” has been created, a very personal examination of the photographer with women of her generation. Whether against the backdrop of Chinese megacities or in intimate settings in the private environment, the young women present themselves confident and individual, but at the same time appearing vulnerable and fragile. Apart from traditional female role models and traditional clichés, they are looking for their way to a self-determined life in the modern, rapidly transforming China.
In the series “YOUTH”, Luo Yang has been working with young people of Generation Z since 2019, i.e. those born in the late 1990s and around 2000. Fluid gender assignments become just as apparent as the search for individual expression between creative staging and authentic body feeling. Luo Yang paints the sensitive picture of the urban Chinese youth in search of orientation and identity.
Migrant Bird Space is a Berlin & Beijing-based art foundation and gallery, providing a showcase for artists as well as art agency services in China & Europe. Working out of the gallery space at Koppenplatz in the heart of Berlin, the foundation offers a professional platform for cross-cultural communication between China and Europe with a focus on contemporary Chinese art. Promoting both established and emerging artists, Migrant Birds provides gallery spaces for exhibitions in Beijing and Berlin, an artist-in-residence program, regular talks and lectures, as well as support in liaising with Museums, universities, private institutions and more.
This catalogue is published on the occasion of Luo Yang’s exhibition organized by Migrant Bird Space Berlin and curated by Lu Mei.
The book is published on the occasion of the exhibition “Pictures From a Briefcase” by Alexander Rappaport at Maxim Boxer Gallery, Riga, Latvia from August 15 to September 9, 2024.
“Pictures From a Briefcase by Alexander Rappaport I find interesting first of all, because seeing only them one would not suspect the intensity, originality and scope of his thought on topics so far removed from everything that is depicted in them. The pictures, unlike his texts, are so unassuming and modest. It seems they are like an earthly anchor above which his ideas soar at unattainable heights.
All together they look like illustrations for a novella, which could either have actually been written, or exists only in the author’s imagination. There is nothing fantastic, exotic, or esoteric here. An ordinary domestic environment.
But an environment, unlike space, always belongs to someone. And yet in Pictures from a Briefcase there is no visible inhabitant, or hero of this book. You are right to suspect the author’s invisible presence. Sasha’s drawings are about himself.
But not his full spiritual life, it seems to me they are only about that side of him in which he is alone. Not in the public space of his blog the Tower and Labyrinth or his articles and texts.
Pictures from a Briefcase is about «The Man in a Case». But let’s not get carried away with this analogy. In Chekhov’s story the whole person is in the case, but in Sasha’s briefcase there is only one side of his life. The quiet and sad one.”
Alexander Stepanov
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Letter to Sasha Stepanov (Alexander Rappaport, early July 1965)
Dear Sanya! Well, I’ve finally picked up the pen. I’ve finished my studies, and that chapter is behind me. We are on the road again. I want to write you a different kind of letter than what we usually exchange. I find myself in a state that invites a different kind of communication, rather than the usual “how are you?” and “what’s up?”. What should I fill my life with now? More precisely, what should I discard to allow what remains to grow? Among all pursuits, I don’t know what I cherish most or what I am most inclined towards. The science I thought I would devote my entire life to just a month ago—urban planning—is a science about everything. It’s a reliable (though shaky) endeavor, but the science is slow and unfamiliar. It reminds me of a long road that must be crawled upon. Yet, science is perhaps the only thing that remains. Mathematics, sociology, psychology, aesthetics—these, blending into architecture, form urbanism (will my frail body withstand this?). There are two other ways of existing; I’m not talking about professions (no, I mean ways to exist, live, breathe, sleep, and love)—these are the arts. Either painting or poetry. These are two equal vows; I don’t know which one to take, but both are terrifying. I can hardly say I have ever truly engaged in painting. With poetry, only pale shadows of verses have crawled out from beneath my [unclear]. But it’s not even about the result. Here, try to understand me; this is very important: it’s not about what I choose to do (write poetry or scientific works)—it’s about who I will be in life: who? After all, a person changes. A person is free to become whatever they want. There are many paths, many ways. One can become a glutton and a scoundrel, or one can be neither a glutton nor a scoundrel. One can become a POET or a philosopher, mathematician, or craftsman. I feel within me the capacity to become whoever I wish. I feel the freedom and right to make that choice. But Time comes to me and says: “Don’t joke with me. If you choose, choose quickly and don’t hesitate; otherwise, everything will shatter and fly to hell. As long as I am the future, you are free; when I am the past, you are my torn body, and you have no choice but to submit.” Write me something, Sanya. And try to understand that this is not a joke. Goodbye. I hope this time you will be my friend and support. Sasha.
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Alexander Gerbertovich Rappaport – a theorist and historian of architecture, philosopher, art historian, writer, blogger, and artist. He spent his childhood in Leningrad, lived in Moscow, London, and for the last twenty years – in a remote seaside village of Mazirbe in Latvia. Alexander Rappaport is best known for his extensive work in the field of theory and history of architecture, having written several thousand texts. His works address fundamental issues in the history of architecture and professional thinking, touching on art history, philosophy, and cultural theory. Alexander Rappaport comes from an artistic and cinematographic family. His father, the well-known film director Herbert Rappaport, an Austrian of Jewish descent, came to the Soviet Union in 1936 to work at the “Lenfilm” film studio. Here he met costume designer Lydia Shildknecht. She also came from a family of artists and architects: her father, artist Pyotr Shildknecht, emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1924 to work in European cinema. Among his films are “The Golden Age,” “An Andalusian Dog” (directed by L. Buñuel, screenplay by S. Dali), and many others. His father Nikolai Alexandrovich Shildknecht was an academic of architecture in imperial St. Petersburg. Alexander Rappaport was born on October 23, 1941, under dramatic circumstances: his family was evacuated to Almaty (Kazakhstan) from besieged Leningrad. His mother went into labor on a train at the Vologda station, which became his accidental birthplace. The family returned to Leningrad after the war in 1946. Rappaport’s beloved grandmother, singer Lydia Ivanovna Shildknecht (Matsievskaya), along with his uncle Viktor Shildknecht, moved to Riga after the war. Viktor was a film artist who was one of the founders of the Riga Film Studio. In childhood, Alexander spent every summer in Jurmala, which formed a strong connection for him with Latvia as the happiest place in his life. In 1958, Rappaport entered the Leningrad Engineering and Construction Institute (LISI) in the architecture faculty. In 1964, he went to Georgia, where he studied drawing with a friend of his mother, Vasily Shukhaev, and lived in the house of Elena Akhvlediani. In Leningrad, he mingled with literary and artistic circles. His acquaintances with Anna Akhmatova, Viktor Sosnora, David Dar, Gleb Gorbovsky, and Joseph Brodsky influenced his entire life. Rappaport moved to Moscow in the early 1970s, where he continued to work as a theorist of architecture. Here he met the renowned philosopher Georgy Petrovich Shchedrovitsky and was a member of his Moscow methodological circle for almost ten years. This became a significant chapter in Rappaport’s life. In 1991, at the invitation of the BBC as a radio correspondent, Rappaport moved to London with his wife, artist Natalia Arendt, and their four-year-old daughter Ariadne Arendt, to start a new life there. In 2004, Rappaport took another decisive step, leaving London and settling in the Latvian village of Mazirbe on the desolate Livonian coast. Amidst a dense pine forest, he transformed a traditional farmstead into an interesting organic architectural project, where he lives alone, plays the piano, paints, and blogs – this has been his main activity for the last twenty years.
Join us with King Koala Press in Berlin on Tuesday, Nov 12, from 7-9 PM for a presentation of ‘Truly Blessed’, a compelling visual narrative exploring community responses to racial and religious discrimination.
Published by King Koala Press, this book features a foreword by Jeffrey Q. McCune, PhD, and includes an extensive interview with Chris Suspect by Ibarionex Perello, host of The Candid Frame. With a testimonial from Guggenheim Fellow Maggie Steber, ‘Truly Blessed’ uses photography to bridge the sacred Black church and secular erotic spaces, highlighting the convergence of body, mind, and spirit. This work acknowledges the complexities of the “sacred” while celebrating the unapologetic existence of the sexual-secular-sacred trinity in the Black queer community.
Meet and greet, book signing and photo exhibition.
“Body to book” is an upcycling project that explores the relationship between the human body and books. It comprises six sculptures assembled from coat fragments and books, each covering a naked body. This arrangement invites explorations of sensuality and intimacy and encourages direct interaction with the subject. Through calling us to examine the subtle interactions between the body and the books, it offers new perspectives for artistic, philosophical and personal reflection on matter, media and the human condition.
@shouseRCA and @shousetanlin are two publications from their respective Twitter accounts. Each account was one of the two voices of the statementhouse (temporary title) built at the Royal College of Art in London in 2015.
The house “spoke” in two ways. One was that of the arrangements of texts and ordinary situations that punctuated its daily life through the action of the two curators Sophie Oxenbridge and Katie Reynolds (@shouseRCA). The other voice was that of poet Tan Lin, echoing it remotely from New York (@shousetanlin).
The two voices answered and prompted each other.
TBOOK is a fictitious publishing house that proposes to transform the Twitter scroll into a book form.
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.
Edited by Miya Yoshida in collaboration with Christiane M-Schwarz & Kerstin Flasche with special contributions by Hongjohn Lin, Marucia Bjørnerud, Jimmie Durham & Akio Suzuki.
How can we reserve time for imagination in the age of digital culture? The publication, Listening to the Stones/ Den Steinen zuhören deals with the contemporary ecology with a metaphor of stones in multi-disciplines. The book, which exists both in a printed and a digital version, consists of images, sounds, silence, and text in three chapters: 1) Time, Planet, Technology, 2) Territory and Politics 3) Body and Performativity.
It presents two newly commissioned theoretical texts by Hongjohn Lin, art theorist, Prof. Taipei National University of the Arts and Marucia Bjørnerud, geoscientist, Prof. Lawrence University, two special text contributions by Jimmie Durham &
and twenty-two art works from Europe and the Southeast Asia.
The book includes the access to different sound files that excerpt from art works. This invites the reader to initiate the act of listening and attempts to open up an imaginative time-space that s/he can form and reform through their own imaginative power. Utilising “stone” as a pivotal point, the book addresses the significance of aesthetics and politics of time and imaginary in the age of digital culture.
The publication is based on the synonymous title of the exhibition that held at the Kunsthaus Dresden from Nov. 20, 2021-March 6, 2022, curated by Miya Yoshida in collaboration with the Kunsthaus Dresden (Christiane Mennicke Schwarz & Kerstin Flasche).
Is your business secured in the case of ecological collapse? Or are you unsure?
Oslo Apiary & Aviary is a provider of dark-ecological tools, goods and services. We work in the overlap between art and ecosystemic change, specializing in urban husbandry, feeding birds, growing worms, keeping bees, tending trees.
A consistent activity throughout our work is the inspection of how the domains ‘urbanity-nature’ and ‘private-public’ are expressed and separated: By caring for plants, birds and insects in the city, we question what types of life belong where. By subjugating ourselves to urban husbandry, we revitalize mutually dependent modes of being. Our entanglement allows for moments of enlivenment in a time of atomizing individuation. We are in this together! Through our embedded practice we try to get a sense of the city’s ontology – how the post-sustainable city is constituted and can, or can’t, be reconstituted.
Currently, ‘can’t” is in the lead, gothifying our practice. Drawing on strategies traditionally associated with the multi-roled artist, we find ourselves simultaneously planting trees as well as branching out into survivalist prepping: an entrepreneurial doomsday cult for hire, toiling in the ruins of humancentrism.
Marius Presterud (b.1980, Drammen) is a Norwegian artist based in Berlin and Oslo. He works across a variety of media; performance, poetry, sculpture and ecoventions, as well as in the field of mental health. Presterud has toured Europe as a poet, as well as performed and exhibited in established galleries such as Hamburger Bahnhof, Germany, and Kunstnernes Hus and Henie Onstad Art Center, Norway. From 2014-2019, Presterud worked full-time with his art- and research based practice, Oslo Apiary & Aviary.
Régine Debatty is a curator, art critic and the founder of award-winning blog we-make- money-not-art.com. Since 2004, she has been writing and lecturing internationally about the way artists, hackers and designers use science and technology as a medium for critical discussion.
Norwegian Sculptor’s Association 2023 Exhibition documentation courtesy of NBF and Kunstdok Goth Beekeeping camera and editing by Lene Johansen Grave Talk recording by Marius Presterud editing by Rebekka Handeland Press photo by Siv Dolmen Catalogue design by Elena Feijoo
Dozie Kanu’s „Cordyceps Gaud Adversary” is the first comprehensive publication that contextualizes and traces his artistic practice of the last four years in relation to the notion of Black material culture, the theatricality of exhibition-making and his understanding of contemporary sculpture.
The publication is published on the occasion of Dozie Kanu’s exhibition at Neuer Essener Kunstverein and and includes, in addition to a generous image section, commissioned texts by Moritz Scheper and manuel arturo abreu, as well as a conversation on the artistic practice of Kanu between Martine Syms, Klein, and the artist.
Authors: manuel arturo abreu, Klein, Martine Syms, Moritz Scheper Publisher: Motto Books, Neuer Essener Kunstverein Design: jmmp.eu (Julian Mader, Max Prediger)
Fruit de longues recherches dans les archives des artistes, l’ouvrage sera doté d’une riche documentation et offrira une relecture inédite de la production artistique italienne entre 1960 et 1975. Apparu dans les années 1960 en Italie, l’Arte Povera est une démarche artistique ; davantage une attitude qu’un mouvement. Théorisé par Germano Celant en 1966, l’Arte Povera s’inscrit dans une volonté de défiance à l’égard des industries culturelles, portée par une nouvelle génération d’artistes incarnant des manières inédites d’appréhender l’art et la création. S’opposant à la consommation de masse et réhabilitant la place de l’homme et de la nature dans l’art, l’Arte Povera en renouvelle les thématiques (l’homme, la nature, le corps, le temps), les matériaux (naturels, de récupération, périssables), les techniques (artisanales), les gestes et l’intention. Il s’agit de repenser les critères d’esthétisme, de se défaire des artifices, de revenir à l’immédiateté des émotions et des sensations. A travers la production de livres, d’affiches, de projections et d’impressions sur toile, les artistes italiens de cette époque se sont appropriés le pouvoir narratif de l’image photographique et filmique afin d’explorer de nouveaux possibles de l’art. Transdisciplinaires, mêlant photographies, films, vidéos, affiches, livres, objets, sculptures et peintures, l’ouvrage, qui l’accompagnera l’exposition, présentera plus de 300 oeuvres de figures majeures de l’Arte Povera, parmi lesquelles Giovanni Anselmo, Alighiero Boetti, Luigi Ghirri, Jannis Kounellis, Piero Manzoni, Mario Merz, Giuseppe Penone, Michelangelo Pistoletto… Conçu comme un livre d’art et non comme un catalogue d’exposition, il donnera à voir l’extraordinaire richesse d’une période où les artistes italiens ont compté parmi les plus importants interprètes de la transformation des langages visuels. Ce nouveau regard sur une démarche artistique majeure des avant-gardes du XXe siècle proposera également une immersion visuelle dans le contexte politique et culturel de l’époque avec des portfolios dédiés au cinéma, théâtre, soirées littéraires, extraits de presse présentant les grands enjeux socioculturels d’alors.