Emerging Sculptures. Alexander Basile. Spontan Verlag.

Die Geschichten hinter den Dingen, die Sprache zwischen ihnen – zwei Perspektiven die der Kölner Künstler Alexander Basile schätzt aber keineswegs als Ideologie verfolgt. Seine Fotografie vermittelt den Eindruck, als drücke er immer erst dann auf den Auslöser, wenn sich vor seinem Auge Dinge und ihre gesellschaftliche Einschreibung zu einer möglichen Skulptur verdichten. Dabei erschafft Basile neue Wirklichkeiten, die flüchtig sind und bildeigenen, ungeschriebenen und zufälligen Gesetzen gehorchen. In seinen Bildern treten Dinge in einen Zusammenhang, der über das unmittelbar Anschauliche hinausgeht. Ihre poetische Kraft fordert vom Betrachter einen schwingenden Blick der die Schichten des Bildes entschlüsselt um dem Geheimnis hinter dem Sichtbaren auf die Spur zu kommen. Scheinbar zufällige gegenständliche Alltags-Konstellationen geben dabei mehr zu denken, als sprachlich gefasst werden kann.

Der vom Spontan Verlag herausgegebene Bildband „Emerging Sculptures“ bündelt 20 Fotograf ien die gegenständliche Gruppierungen, Gegenstände, Räume und Oberflächen betrachten. Ihre zufällige Anordnung evoziert Geschichten, die jeder für sich im Auge der Motive neu schreibt. Alle zu sehenden Formen sind zufällig und vermitteln dennoch Ewiges. Die Bilder dokumentieren die Aufteilung eines wahllosen Raumes und die Platzierung der Dinge in ihm. Jene gehen geheimnisvolle Korrespondenzen ein und werden zu Objekten der Kunst in einem Raum, dessen Grenzen und Inhalte verschwimmen. Keines der Motive wurde wissentlich geformt. Alles entstand aus dem Impuls des Moments, in dem der Künstler sein Sein in Raum aufblitzen sah und die Entbergung spontan fotografisch einfing. Vorgefundene Objekte verschmelzen im Winkel der Perspektive zu einem Narrativ das unzählige Deutungen ermöglicht und auf Eindeutigkeiten verzichtet. Für Basile ist das Bild das Destillat einer Atmosphäre, die der Künstler spürt und nicht arrangiert bevor der Auslöser betätigt. Eine Technik die keine ist, deren mäandernder Charakter stets voran schreitet und die bewegende Motive aus dem Kontinuum der empirischen Wirklichkeit fischt um sie zu etwas Einzigartigem zu fixieren. In der Buchedition werden die Stillleben und Alltagsskulpturen von hauchdünnem Pergamentpapier getrennt. Das Blättern selbst wird so zum Entschleiern eines Blicks der schweifend das Zusammenspiel von Kunst und Leben sichtbar macht.

Dem Künstler selbst strebte allerdings keine genuine Sichtbarmachung eines Kunstwerks vor. Vielmehr eine nicht konstruierte visuelle Idee, die der Betrachter durch seinen visuellen Wortschatz und sein eigenes Wissen zu etwas addiert, dessen Bedeutung nur in ihm aufblitzt. Es bleibt stets unklar, ob es sich bei den Aufnahmen um Dokumente des Alltags handelt oder um akribisch geformte Konstruktionen aus einem Atelier. Jenes Wechselspiel bildet für Basile die „einzige Möglichkeit mit der Photographie weiter machen zu können. Nur wenn diese im Stande ist sich zu bewegen, und wenn auch nur im Auge des Betrachters, lässt sich das Monument auf Papier gebracht, im Rahmen und hinter Glass noch als Möglichkeit von Kommunikation verwenden.“

Auflage von 300 Exemplaren
Offset
18 Seiten
20 Abbildungen
ISBN: 978-3-00-041592-0

Price: €25

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A new art school? Statements by 30 artists, writers and architects.

Over the past two decades, Berlin’s growth into an international art metropolis has brought many people to the city. A number of these imports teach art – seemingly in all other cities but Berlin. The city’s two schools providing full-scale arts education – the Universität der Künste (UdK) and the Hochschule Berlin Weissensee – were established long before 1989.

Since 2006, if not before, discussions about the UdK’s organizational and administrative politics have flared up – generated, for one, by the stepping down of Stan Douglas and Daniel Richter as professors, a development the UdK attempted to atone for by appointing prominent professors such as Olafur Eliasson (whose assignment though ends March 2014). Weissensee has seen an outflow of professors with international profiles to teaching posts in other cities – Karin Sander has taught in Zurich since 2007, Katharina Grosse in Düsseldorf since 2010 – and the school has gone the way of appointing guest professors and lecturers.

Reputations, ratings and capacities for reform aside, the question still presents itself whether Berlin, given its manifold art scene, is in need of new models and directions for its art education. In 2006–7, the one-year temporary project unitednationsplaza underscorred the city’s desire for an informal art school mediating its larger, international art discourse.

Does the current situation suffice? If not, what form would a new institute ideally take? frieze d/e asked Monica BONVICINI, Helmut DRAXLER, Tom HOLERT and Robert KUDIELKA for extended responses to these questions. A set of additional artists and theorists also contributed shorter statements.

Finally, six artists and architects – Roger BUNDSCHUH, Eva GRUBINGER, Sabine HORNIG, Michelle HOWARD, KUEHN MALVEZZI, and Studio MIESSEN – were asked to submit concrete drafts for the design and structure of a new art academy.

And much more…

Editors: Matthew Slotover, Amanda Sharp
Language: German / English
Pages: 158

Price: €8.50
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Polyethylene. Common Task by Paweł Althamer, Mousse Publishing.

Polyethylene. Common Task, published on the occasion of Paweł Althamer’s exhibition at Museion in Bolzano, is a visual and textual journey through the participatory processes that 
Polyethylene. Common Task, published on the occasion of Paweł Althamer’s exhibition at Museion in Bolzano, is a visual and textual journey through the participatory processes that inform the work of the Warsaw-based artist. Focusing on the sculptural outcome of his research as well as the developments of those social activities that play a key role in the artist’s work, the book also reports on the “invasion” of the Museum by twenty-five friends and neighbors of the Polish artist.
With texts by Sebastian Cichocki, Letizia Ragaglia, Andrea Viliani, along with hundreds of images, the book narrates “an adventurous exploration of the unexpressed potential that lies in human action and the real world, as launching pads for the voyage towards others and toward other, possible worlds” (Andrea Viliani).

D 30€

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Christina Mackie. Chisenhale Gallery, Kunsthal Charlottenborg

This publication accompanies the first exhibition in Scandinavia by the Canadian artist Christina Mackie. The exhibition, entitled Painting the Weights, consists of an extraordinary installation that features such diverse elements as watercolours, photographs and ceramics, as well as found materials that range from mineral specimens to plastic beer crates. The exhibition follows Mackie’s ongoing fascination with both human technologies and natural materials, and her exploration of the connections that run between people, societies and the natural world.

D 8 €

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A Toast to the Ghost, the Host, Michael Van den Abeele.

“RENDER ME REAL. Millions of computers are rendering in the night; rendering everything more real, more realistic; rendering a new generation of extraterrestrials looking more real that the ones before; a new generation of dinosaurs, now feathered but covered in fur soon enough, if current rendering is done; of evil midget-like creatures; of astonishing landscapes covered with paramount super-structures and populated by the millions; a new generation of things as yet indescribable, but imperatively more real and convincing than before. The real is chased after like a deer; like the hunter that changed into a deer, now chased by his own dogs…”

Includes a conversation between Michael Van den Abeele and Dennis Cooper.

Published on the occasion of Un-Scene II (exposition June 2012) at Wiels, Centre for Contemporary Art.

D 15 €

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Featuring texts:
Le Refus by Maurice Blanchot
Bataille on Architecture
Madison Madman – interview with Hasil Adkins
To be read aloud – script by Mike Kelley / Franz West
24 Statements zur Frage des Subjekts by Marcus Steinweg
Artur Barrio, selected pages

Texts either in French, English, German or Spanish

http://www.theflesh.tk/

D 12 €

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Michał Budny. Kerber.

By using the simplest tools and materials – predominantly paper and cardboard – Michal Budny creates formally restrained models not only of objects, places and situations, but also of phenomena which do not have a fixed material form, such as voice, memory, rain or a ray of sunlight. The meticulously constructed tiny objects and sculptures, as well as the monumental installation or site-specific works by Budny function as an echo of the reality and are at the same time a discreet story about transitoriness, the fading away of the contents with the paper, empty forms and shapes whose sense is difficult to decipher due to the passing of time and their removal in space. Because of the modesty of his material and the freehand nature of the constructions, these works seem to be especially close and homely. They give form and meaning to that which we would previously consider as empty space. In this sense, Budny´s activities are a poetic interpretation of the architecture around us and the ways in which life fills it with meaning.

The illustrated book was published following the exhibition „Michał Budny. WORKS – objects, spatial forms“, 2009, Center For Contemporary Art, Warsaw.

Edited by: Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle and Raster Gallery, Warsaw
Authors: Jakub Banasik, Łukasz Gorczyca and Jan Verwoert
ISBN: 978-3-86678-319-5
Format: 20,50 × 25,50 cm
Pages: 168
Illustrations: 76 colored and 29 b/w illustrations
Cover: Hardcover, bound
Languages: English | Polish

D 75€

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Pist Protta 70

PP 70 er et særnummer om skulptur, hvor skulpturbegrebet endevendes og udvides gennem en visuelt generøs og tekstligt nøjsom, overdådig kollision af udklip fra arkivet, sådan som vi kender det fra de gamle tidsskriftdage. Pist Protta 70 er Pist Protta classic!
PP-arkivet har til lejligheden været endevendt, hvilket er en meget omfattende operation, da arkivet er akkummuleret gennem flere årtier, og resultatet er en ukommenteret udklipssamling, sat op i stort format på mange sider, både i sort-hvid og farve.
Alting taler for sig selv, og vi viger ikke tilbage for at betegne udvalget som et bud på en ny skulpturkanon, der langt overgår alle kanoner, der tidligere er lanceret.

D 11 €
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Text by Carson Chan; introduction by Martin Hochleitner

Over the past few years, Eva Grubinger’s work has investigated the definition of public, institutional, and museum spaces through installations and objects. In these works, ruptures or breaks in the assumed function of space or site-specific installations, as well as those involving the allocation of content to employed forms, play a significant role.

Decoy documents the eponymous exhibition at Landesgalerie Linz in 2011 in which Grubinger presented large-scale sculptural works, all of which referenced the fishing—lures, mooring rings, a dock—and both subtly and explicitly engaged a vocabulary of the alluring. The catalogue includes an introduction by Martin Hochleitner and an essay by Carson Chan.

Design by Manuel Raeder

D 22€

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Produced in conjunction with Geneva – Berlin residency, Atelier Schönhauser Berlin, battlefield presents a selection of living sculptures made by the artist Jérôme Leuba between 2008-2010.

Jérôme Leuba (*1970, Geneva Switzerland) works with photography, video and installation. Since 2004, most of his pieces are gathered under the title “battlefield”.

D 19.50€

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