The Incomplete Rationalism of OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen. Roberto Gargiani. Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König.

Posted in Monograph, writing on December 16th, 2023
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ARCHITECTURAL WORKS BY OFFICE FOR THE 21ST CENTURY: THE INCOMPLETE RATIONALISM OF OFFICE KERSTEN GEERS DAVID VAN SEVEREN.

Die Publikation stellt die Projekte von OFFICE durch eine kritische Analyse auf der Grundlage von Archivdokumenten vor und rekonstruiert den Einfluß der kreativen Prinzipien von OFFICE auf die neuen Architektengeneration. Die OFFICE-Projekte wurde in den frühen 2000er Jahren erstmals wahrgenommenund erlangten als neue Formen der digitalen Collage mit kulturellem Engagement große Bekanntheit. Der Autor zeichnet die Entwicklung ihrer frühen Ideen, die als Papierarchitektur entwickelt wurden, bis hin zu den heutigen Gebäuden von erheblicher Größe und Präsenz nach. Das dem Buch zugrunde liegende Argument zeigt die Fähigkeit von OFFICE, in jedem Projekt den Funken einer theoretischen Konstruktion zu bewahren, die in den meisten Fällen nach einer rigorosen Ökonomie der Mittel ausgeführt wird. Selbst die neuen Denkmäler für öffentliche Einrichtungen werden weiterhin von einer kreativen Spannung radikaler Überlegenheit erhellt. ***** This book presents OFFICE projects through a critical analysis based on archive documents. It also reconstructs the influence of OFFICE’s creative principles among the new generations of architects. The OFFICE projects appeared in the early 2000s and gained prominence as new forms of digital collage with a cultural engagement. The author traces the evolution of their early ideas developed as paper architecture to the current buildings of a significant scale and presence. The underlying argument of the book demonstrates OFFICE’s ability to preserve in every project the spark of a theoretical construction, which in most cases is carried out according to a rigorous economy of means. Even the new monuments for public institutions continue to be illuminated by a creative tension of radical superiority.

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SKIPHOLT. John Bock. Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König

Posted in Uncategorized on November 20th, 2021
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John Bock’s latest artist’s book combines over 150 video stills from his film “Skipholt” shot 2005 in Iceland, each with a corresponding drawing. Structured like a logbook of an expedition, it traces the path of the protagonist played by the artist himself, who embarks on a journey across the sea, volcanic plains and glaciers. The drawings read like notations of a journey, sometimes picture, sometimes diagram, peppered with word creations or theoretical explanations that reflect John Bock’s thought bubble and reveal the conjured para zone to the reader. The book is at the same time an art object, packed in a corduroy bag, filled with ‘KleinodtodSods’ – useful everyday objects such as Q-tips, thread and safety pin – and equipped with the practical belt pouch, so that nothing stands in the way of one’s own expedition.

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Laura Owens & Vincent van Gogh. Bice Curiger, Mark Godfrey, Julia Marchand (Eds.). Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König

Posted in Exhibition catalogue, Exhibitions on November 20th, 2021
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Laura Owens (b. 1970) is one of the most celebrated American artists working today. For 25 years she has asked probing questions about the parameters of painting.

In this exhibition, her works responded to Van Gogh’s last paintings. Throughout 2020 Owens lived in and around Arles, and her new work came out of meticulous research into the history of the city and of Van Gogh’s connections there.

Like most artists, Owens has known Van Gogh’s work since she was a child, and she has looked at his art in various ways throughout her career.

The seven actual Van Gogh paintings shown at the Foundation in Arles included loans from museums with which Owens has a deep connection.

Laura Owens has often addressed the spaces where she has exhibited. For this exhibition she created a vast painting, in the form of a unique hand-painted and silkscreened wallpaper installation, which covered the entire walls of the rooms where the Van Gogh’s works were exhibited.

Many of the motifs in the wallpaper come from designs made by Winifred How, who worked in London as an artist and designer shortly after Van Gogh was alive. The installation drew a suspended universe between premodern and contemporary, inspired by How’s work.

Co-curated by Bice Curiger (artistic director of the Foundation Vincent van Gogh Arles) and Mark Godfrey (British art historian, critic, and curator), the exhibition shared how Laura Owens explores the images, colours and methods of Van Gogh, creating a conceptual framework for her investigations.

Published after the exhibition at Foundation Vincent van Gogh Arles, France (19 June – 31 October 2021).

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Public Abstraction. Vlado Velkov. Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König

Posted in history, writing on June 2nd, 2015
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Could it be that fundamental aspects of abstraction remain to be discovered? Abstraction is usually conceived of formally and pictorially, whereby its underlying thought patterns often recede into the background. This book attempts to question the notion of abstraction and art history’s use of it by opening the term up to new interpretations in relation to the public and social spheres of activity. Numerous artistic contributions as well as essays by Gerrit Gohlke, Stefan Heidenreich, Alexander Koch, Ana Teixeira Pinto, Petra Reichensperger, Raimar Stange, Marcus Steinweg, and Vlado Velkov indicate various ways of reconsidering abstraction as a process and a method of artistic production.

2015
English / German
300 pages
Softcover

€22.00

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The Personal Effects of Kim Dotcom. Simon Denny. Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König

Posted in Exhibition catalogue on December 23rd, 2013
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The Personal Effects of Kim Dotcom. Simon Denny. Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König

Simon Denny, who was awarded the Baloise Art Prize at Art Basel Statements in 2012, is interested in the development and contradictions of our thoroughly mediatized society. His installations, objects, and projects focus on the connections between changes in media, commerce, aesthetics, and politics-with their ever repeated and always rapidly obsolete promise of the new.

Texts from Christian Höller, Jasmine McNealy & Matthias Michalka. Interview by Laura Preston
16,5 x 24 cm
80 pages
18€
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The Recovery of Discovery. Cyprien Gaillard. Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König

Posted in Exhibition catalogue on September 13th, 2012
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The Recovery of Discovery, Cyprien Gaillard, published by Verlag der Buschhandlung Walther König.

Die Erhaltung eines Monuments scheint auch immer seine Zerstörung zu beinhalten. Um städtische Architekturen, Kulturdenkmäler und Reliquien zu bewahren, erfolgt nicht selten ihre Überführung an andere Orte. Der Transfer ändert nicht nur die Geschichte des Ursprungsortes, sondern führt auch zu einer brachialen Umdeutung des vor der Zerstörung Bewahrten. Für seine Ausstellung in den KW Institute for Contemporary Art schuf Cyprien Gaillard (geboren 1980 in Paris) eine neue, raumgreifende Arbeit, die erst durch die aktive Mißachtung ihrer Form die Komplexität ihrer Bezüge aufzeigt. Gleich einer öffentlichen Amnesie, verloren in der ausweglosen Interaktion mit dokumentiert in einer langen Kleinbildserie die völlige Zerstörung der Pyramide.
*****
Preserving a monument goes hand in hand with destroying it. In order to preserve architecture, cultural monuments and relics, they are often relocated, allowing urban displacement to arise – leading to the disappearance of the concept of autonomous geography and archeology. The dislocation of a monument does not only alter the history of its original location, but also leads to a radical re-interpretation of the monument itself. For his exhibition at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Cyprien Gaillard created a new work containing complex implications, which will only be revealed through an act of complete defiance. Similar to public amnesia, lost in the hopeless interaction with the monument, the gradual destruction
becomes a part of the aesthetic of resistance. The catalogue which is published on the occasion of the exhibition “Cyprien Gaillard. The Recovery of Discovery” at KW Institute of Contemporary Art in Berlin, depicts the gradual destruction of the sculpture and includes contributions by Hal Foster, Marion von Osten, and Susanne Pfeffer as well as a conversation with Cyprien Gaillard and Susanne Pfeffer.

D 22€

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FESPA Digital / Fruit Logistica. Wolfgang Tillmans. Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König.

Posted in photography on August 6th, 2012
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FESPA Digital / Fruit Logistica.

Vor einem guten Jahr besuchte Wolfgang Tillmans die Berliner Messe “Fruit Logistica”, das führende Branchentreffen der internationalen Fruchthandelswelt. “Dort gingen mir die Augen über angesichts der verrückten Displays und der Vielfalt und Komplexheit des internationalen Fruchthandels und seiner Verarbeitungsmaschinen. Darauf reagierte ich sofort mit der Kamera, habe die Bilder aber dann erstmal liegen lassen, um sie mit Abstand betrachten zu können, obwohl ich gleich an ein Künstlerbuch im “Concorde”- Format dachte”. Jetzt liegt es vor!

D 19.80 €

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You Killed Me First: The Cinema Of Transgression. KW Berlin. Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König

Posted in Exhibition catalogue, performance, video on August 6th, 2012
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You Killed Me First: The Cinema Of Transgression.

Albtraumhafte Gewaltszenarien, dramatische Seelenzustände, perverse sexuelle Abgründe: Die bewußt auf Schock, Provokation und Konfrontation angelegten Filme des Cinema of Transgression zeugen von einer außergewöhnlichen Radikalität. In den 1980er Jahren ging eine Gruppe von Filmemachern in der New Yorker Lower East Side auf Kollisionskurs mit der amerikanischen Gesellschaft. Alle moralischen und ästhetischen Grenzen überschreitend, enthüllten sie in ihren Filmen eine soziale Härte, die auf gesellschaftspolitische Gleichgültigkeit trifft. In den teilweise mit geklautem Kameraequipment gedrehten Low-Budget-Filmen manifestieren sich scharfe Analysen des von Kriminalität, Brutalität, Drogen, Aids, Sex und Exzessen geprägten Lebens in der Lower East Side. Standphotos, Bildausschnitte, Flugblätter und die harte Typographie vermitteln perfekt die Ernsthaftigkeit der Künstler.

Nightmarish scenarios of violence, dramatic states of mind, and perverse sexual abysses – the films of the Cinema of Transgression that were consciously aimed at shock, provocation, and confrontation, bear witness to an extraordinary radicality. In the 1980s a group of filmmakers from the Lower East Side in New York went on a collision course with the conventions of American society. Transcending all moral or aesthetic boundaries, the low budget films reveal social hardship met with sociopolitical indifference. Sometimes shot with stolen camera equipment, the films contain strident analyses of life in the Lower East Side defined by criminality, brutality, drugs, AIDS, sex, and excess. The catalogue is published on the occasion of the worldwide first exhibition on the Cinema of Transgression, YOU KILLED ME FIRST at KW Institute of Contemporary Art in Berlin. The catalogue includes contributions by Sylvère Lotringer, Carlo McCormick, Jonas Mekas, Susanne Pfeffer, Jack Sargeant and Nick Zedd.

D 15€

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Marketa Othova. Marketa Othova. Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König

Posted in photography on September 5th, 2011
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Marketa Othova
Marketa Othova

Marketa Othovas installations of large black-and-white photographs, often using grids and linear sequences, combined with the occasional stand-alone photograph, destabilise and question traditional photography. Her juxtapositions of interiors, landscapes, and still lifes – edited from past and present photographs – create intriguing visual and temporal rhythms.
This catalogue is the first encompassing publication on her oeuvre. It was published 2010 in cooperation with Jiri Svestka Gallery in Prague and the Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König in Cologne.

With essays by Karel Cisar and Christina Vegh.

168 pages
250mm x 210mm
ISBN: 978-3-86560-711-9
Published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König 2010

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