All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. — David Noonan, 2012
This newspaper is published biannually by JRP|Ringier. Issue 3, Spring 2012. Printed by Ringier Print Adligenswil AG. 15 000 copies. Not for sale
We make Books With Art This third issue of JRP|Ringier’s journal contains many updates about our program, recent releases, and current projects, and is aimed at our readers, preferred booksellers, and all art world professionals. Interviews with artists and editors, presentations of new books, as well as information about our two locations in Zurich and Paris—we offer you a glimpse of our daily activities and a chance to enter into the realm of book making. At a time when the cultural arena in Europe is threatened by the politics of austerity, we would like to reaffirm our commitment to weigh in on the art debates by publishing the artists and writers we believe are currently marking our culture. And while many publishing companies, like ours, are suffering from the still-unknown-but-inevitable paradigm shift to the digital, we are manifesting our trust in books with two very “physical” changes: the redefinition of the 8 rue Saint-Bon space in Paris as an extension of our publishing program, and the re-opening of Kunstgriff bookstore in the new Löwenbrau in Zurich. To remain up-to-date with our program visit us at www.jrp-ringier.com, subscribe to our newsletter, or follow us on Facebook.
Highlights
David Noonan, Untitled, 2009 (paper collage)
Ericka Beckman Martin Boyce Jef Cornelis Jimmie Durham Joana Hadjithomas/ Khalil Joreige Vít Havránek Das Institut Kunstgriff Booksore David Noonan Hans Ulrich Obrist Paulina Olowska Raymond Pettibon Clive Phillpot Kateřina Šedá Sturtevant Ai Weiwei 8 rue Saint-Bon
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David Noonan
Reference Monograph
David Noonan (Photo: Mark Blower)
Your artist’s book “Scenes” (published in 2009) references educational textbooks; how would you define your relationship with printed matter in general and books in particular? One can see a link between the silk-screening of canvases and offset printing, but isn’t it also something about the sequencing and layering of images? Books and printed matter in general are central to my work. Almost all of my work includes found images from one source or another. The design aspect and printing, even the paper stocks of certain books and magazines are important. As you say, “Scenes,” as well as an earlier book entitled “Pageant,” referenced aspects of design, printing, and format that I admired in some of the books that I have collected. I use a monochrome palette, which again is a reference to the source material that I use. With the layering of images or collaging of the screen-printed images, this is where I feel the work moves away from the aesthetic of the printed page. I have become increasingly interested in the surface of my pictures; they are often heavily built up and can be quite rough—something that is not always evident when the work is reproduced.
David Noonan
I like accidents, mistakes, and unplanned things that become part of the finished piece
When constructing your paintings and sculptures, you cull images from various sources, but mostly from books on dance, theater, religion, etc. How would you characterize your method of choosing these images, which have often been qualified as imbued with a “haunting” quality and a “cinematic” effect? It is hard to characterize my method of choosing images for work. It starts from collecting material from some of the areas you mentioned as well as others. It is quite an intuitive process. I archive what I find and then I look at it a lot in the context of the other material in the archive. Sometimes things emerge and want to be placed together. Sometimes an image lies dormant for years until I find something that activates it. I usually make work as a series or body of work. Whether it is pictures or sculptures, they need to have a connection to one another. The space of the gallery often influences these
Interview by Lionel Bovier
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relationships further. My recent show at Xavier Hufkens is an example of this. I thought of the figures in the pictures as being participants in a kind of frozen performance. Some of the same characters appeared in various pictures and in different rooms of the gallery creating a narrative connection between the pieces both in content and spatially. I think people’s reading of the work as having a cinematic quality may be attributed to the way I combine images, they are almost always a superimposition or a combination of two layers of varying transparency, like a cinematic dissolve. The haunting quality, I am not sure, I think of them as being perhaps more melancholic than haunting.
Over the last few years, there has been a renewed interest in craft techniques such as ceramics or tapestry; how do you position yourself within these trends and how much are you “invested” in the craftsmanship of your works? I have noticed this recent focus on craft, but I don’t really think about my position within it. When I was at art school craft was not really separated from art. We studied ceramics (we had a class called “Crafts” in which we learned how to sew) alongside painting and drawing. I have been using images of textiles in much of my work over the last few years—modernist rugs and tapestries and more recently Japanese Boro fabrics. I see a lot of connections between these traditional functional and decorative textiles and In a recent interview, you mention that you col- 20th-century abstract painting and aspects of Arte Povera. In terms of an investment lected a lot of books from the Zurich publisher in craft in my work I am not sure. The Zytglogge. These publications from the 1970s “making” of the pieces is important, there and 1980s deal mostly with experimental are quite a number of steps, each with teaching methods; I think you had a personal different technical elements from the experience with some of them? Was this related actual printing to the construction of the to a Steiner school? I did collect a lot of the Zytglogge cat- pieces in the studio. It is important to me that the work is handmade even though alogues. I did not use much of it directly there are mechanical aspects to the in my work; I was more interested in the process. I like accidents, mistakes, and design and the overall aesthetic of the books and how the philosophy or ethos of unplanned things that become part of the finished piece. I have recently made the teaching methods was expressed in the images and the design. I could not read two tapestries with the Australian tapestry workshop. It was a really rewardthe text as I don’t read or speak German, but that was part of the interest for me, it ing experience working with weavers interpreting my images. Their skill and was a purely visual engagement. I did sensitivity was amazing and I guess not have any direct experience with this kind of education although I was aware of they took the work into a kind of purely craft area where in some ways it actually it while growing up, my mother was a became an element of what it had set teacher, and I remember her being quite out to reference. open to alternative educational styles. The Book: David Noonan
Also Available: David Noonan, Scenes Edited by Lionel Bovier
Edited by David Noonan
Authors Michael Bracewell Jennifer Higgie Dominic Molon
Author Jennifer Higgie
English edition Fall 2012 ISBN: 978-3-03764-205-4 Softcover, 237 x 286 mm 160 pages CHF 60 / EUR 40 / GBP 25 / US 55
English edition Available ISBN: 978-3-03764-029-6 Hardcover, 270 x 270 mm 64 pages Images 24 color / 5 b/w CHF 45 / EUR 30 / GBP 20 / US 39.95
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Among documenta 13 participants are a number of artists we published books on or by recently: Jimmie Durham (see p. 6 of this journal); Roman Ondak, whose book, “Measuring the Universe,” is still available (ISBN: 978-3-03764-024-1); Matias Faldbakken, who published in the Christoph Keller series some years ago a beautiful monograph (ISBN: 978-3-905770-92-6; limited stocks); Gustav Metzger, who was a co-editor of “Voids,” an anthology about “politics of emptiness” (hardcover still available, ISBN: 978-303764-036-4); Ryan Gander, whose “Catalogue Raisonnable” was released two years ago (ISBN: 978-303764-146-0); Seth Price, whose monograph published in the Kunsthalle Zürich series is now out of print; Susan Hiller, whose writings have been published in our “Positions” series (ISBN: 978-3905829-56-3); as well as three others we feature below:
Documenta 4 | 5 by Jef Cornelis
DVDs by BDV
The current debate about documenta 13, its artists’ selection, its qualities and flaws, is the perfect occasion to reconsider the history of documenta, the not-to-be-missed international art exhibition. Thanks to Belgian filmmaker Jef Cornelis, we can now dive into two of its most important editions: documenta 4 held in 1968, and documenta 5 in 1972. DOCUMENTA 4
Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla Published in the Kunsthalle Zürich series this monograph was conceived in close collaboration with the artists (ISBN: 978-3-03764-027-2).
Mika Taanila Monograph published in the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst series on the Finnish artist and filmmaker (ISBN: 978-3-905701-32-6).
Documenta 4 by Jef Cornelis is the first title of the new “Archives” series, which is dedicated to landmark exhibitions and curatorial practices, and which provides reference material and moving images to a growing field of research, that of curatorial studies and exhibition history. documenta 4—the last to be directed by Arnold Bode—was plagued by controversy and debate: artistic, political, generational, and aesthetic conflicts, as well as tensions between European and American art were some of the issues that affected this edition, echoing the social and political upheavals that were taking place elsewhere at the same time. The film reflects this effervescence, giving voice to the artists, curators, and audience, but also offers a unique approach to
an exhibition in progress. We can watch Sol LeWitt constructing Three-Part Variations, Joseph Beuys installing Raumplastik, Martial Raysse talking about the role of the artist, Harald Szeemann defending the concept of the museum, Edward Kienholz explaining his work from inside his Roxys installation, and so on. DOCUMENTA 5 documenta 5 was organized by “master– curator” Harald Szeeman, and remains one of the most important international exhibitions of the last few decades. Entitled Interrogation of Reality– Picture Worlds Today, it could be considered the first instance of an “exhibition as spectacle.” Introducing the different sections and protagonists, the film is both a report on the trends and pacesetters of the time,
Gerard Byrne
Edward Kienholz
In this artist’s book, Byrne brings together the culmination of years of research into the Loch Ness Monster. Appropriating formal conventions from the history of Land art that position landscape as the “other,” he has compiled a series of images that deploy Loch Ness as a signifier for the enigmatic, the unreadable (ISBN: 978-3-03764-271-9).
Text by Clément Dirié | Images: @Jef Cornelis/BRT, Courtesy Argos (Brussels)
being. So when it was held for the fifth time, documenta could become that keynote player on the stage, crystallizing many of the debates—indeed conflicts— and in return it was accorded the role of a higher instance of legitimation and prescription, addressed to and used by its community. Today many people would still like to see that role as active.” JEF CORNELIS Born in Antwerp in 1941, Jef Cornelis attended a course run by the Amsterdam Film Academy, alongside the director Paul Verhoeven and the cameraman Paul de Bondt. Cornelis then joined a Flemishspeaking Belgian television channel (VRT), working in the artistic and educational programs department, and made his first film in 1964. This was unexplored territory at the time, allowing daring innovations and derivative work to develop, in the absence of a standardized television language. During the course of his careee, Jef Cornelis has realized more than 200 films, especially on architecture, literature, and the arts.
Jef Cornelis (Photo: Harry Gruyaert/Magnum Photos)
Lawrence Weiner
DVDs by BDV
Recently Published
and an approach to the phenomenon of documenta, sidestepping and questioning the definitions of exhibition makers, as well as of artists, of an exhibition, and of contemporary art. In documenta 5, one can see works by Art & Language, Ben, Joseph Beuys, Marcel Broodthaers, Edward Kienholz, Bruce Nauman, Richard Serra, and interviews with Jean-Christophe Ammann, Art & Language, Joseph Beuys, Christian Boltanski, Bazon Brock, Daniel Buren, Leo Castelli, Joseph Kosuth, Hermann Nitsch, Arnulf Rainer, Harald Szeemann, and Lawrence Weiner. As art historian Yves Aupetitallot states: “documenta 5 is one of the absolute icons of the illustrated history of modernity, the symbolic space in which the epistemological break that would precede, indeed usher in, the entry of art into the contemporary era, took place. The exhibition’s structure and its governance, the main thrust of the event serving a forwardlooking vision, and consequently the passing of power from one generation to the next, were stabilized for the time
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Luigi Ghirri Including about 220 pictures, an essay by Elena Re, interviews with Paola Ghirri, Massimo Minini, and Andrea Bellini, and extracts from Ghirri’s writings, this book is like a journey through the work and a glimpse at the working process the Italian photographer (ISBN: 978-3-03764-249-8).
Piero Gilardi The publication is the first comprehensive monograph on the pioneer of Arte Povera, inventor of a “relational aesthetics” in the 1960s, political activist, and advocate of an ecologically concerned undertaking in the visual arts (ISBN: 978-3-03764-242-9).
Tim Rollins & K.O.S. Tim Rollins and K.O.S. (Kids of Survival) have been collaboratively drawing and painting on book pages since 1982. The publication has been conceived as a guide and includes newly commissioned critical texts, thus providing an overview on the group’s practice and methodologies (ISBN: 978-3-03764-241-2).
DVDs by BDV Edited by Yves Aupetitallot
Edited by Yves Aupetitallot
English / French edition Available ISBN: 978-3-03764-257-3 DVD, 54 minutes CHF 38 / EUR 25 / GBP 17 / US 35
English / French edition Available ISBN: 978-3-03764-258-0 DVD, 54 minutes CHF 38 / EUR 25 / GBP 17 / US 35
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Beat Streuli The monograph “Public Works 1996–2011” is a survey of the Swiss artist’s work in the public realm. It includes newly commissioned essays by Raymond Bellour, Roberta Valtorta, and Jonathan Watkins (ISBN: 978-3-03764-206-1).
Luigi Ontani A new monograph on the Italian artist featuring a complete chronology, as well as essays by Andrea Bellini and Jean-Christophe Ammann (ISBN: 978-3-03764-286-3).
Daria Martin “Sensorium Test” is a new monograph on the American artist, based on her new film of the same title. The publication includes key texts selected by Martin into such issues, as voyeurism and projection, artificial intelligence and magic, from a host of leading writers and thinkers from Mary Shelley to Wayne Koestenbaum, via Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Rainer-Werner Fassbinder, and Laura Mulvey (ISBN: 978-3-03764-272-6).
Jimmie Durham Comprehensive Monograph
Jimmie Durham, born in 1940, is one of the most influential artists today, not least for younger generations of artists and curators. He says of his art that it “works against the two foundations of the European tradition: Belief and Architecture.” Sculpture, seen as the coming together of object, image, and word, is fundamental to his practice, but he is also a poet, essayist, and educator. Durham’s life as an artist began in the mid-1960s in Texas. In the early 1970s he worked in Geneva. In the late 1970s he was a political organizer with the American Indian Movement, Director of the International Indian Treaty Council and its representative to the United Nations. In New York around 1980 he turned once again to art. Between 1987 and 1994 he was based in Mexico, and thereafter in Europe, or, as he prefers to say, in Eurasia. This generously illustrated book is published to accompany Durham’s exhibition at M HKA, Antwerp: it is a comprehensive retrospective featuring more than 100 works from all his creative periods. It contains major new essays, as well as new texts by Durham himself.
Tlunh Datsi, 1985, skull, feathers, fur, turquoise, acrylic paint, shells, wood, 103 × 91 × 81 cm Private Collection, Belgium (Photo: Maria Thereza Alves)
The Book: A Matter of Life and Death and Singing: Jimmie Durham, Works 1964-2012 Authors Guy Brett Bart De Baere Jimmie Durham Anders Kreuger Richard William Hill
Antidote The catalogue of the Ginette Moulin & Guillaume Houzé Contemporary Art Collection, this book includes a comic by Jean-Marc Ballée and five curated sections (by Pierre Bal-Blanc, Claire Le Restif, Alexis Vaillant, Jens Hoffmann, and Christiane Rekade). French (ISBN: 978-3-03764-248-1) and English (ISBN: 978-3-03764-229-0) editions available.
English edition Available ISBN: 978-3-03764-289-4 160 pages, 150 color CHF 45/EUR 32/ GBP 28/US 45
Sturtevant New Monograph
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In recent years, Sturtevant has expanded her practice to include mass-media images and her own filmed material. This has shed new light on her career and emphasizes how her life-long artistic practice has continuously and effectively levelled harsh, rebellious, and intelligent critique at a society that consists increasingly of simulacra and the experience industry. At the last Venice Biennial, Sturtevant was awarded the Golden Lion for her lifetime achievement in the arts.
The publication has been realized on the occasion of Sturtevant’s exhibition at Moderna Museet in Stockholm and Kunsthalle Zürich (opening in November 2012).
The Book: Image Over Image
New Releases in the Migros Museum fur Gegenwartskunst Series
Since her debut in New York in 1965, Sturtevant has notoriously insisted on the power of thought, performing investigations into the underlying structure of art. Her legendary repetitions of works by other artists is a groundbreaking achievement in challenging concepts such as originality, authenticity, and the conventions surrounding authorship. Her first artistic statements are contemporary with, or indeed predate, the most famous essays and lectures on the subject by Barthes, Foucault, and Deleuze.
Florian Germann A first monograph dedicated to the Swiss artist, the book reunites real and fictional characters, motifs (such as lycanthropy), and sources (often stemming from paranormal sciences), that constitute the system of references of his sculptures and installations (ISBN: 978-3-03764-270-2).
Ragnar Kjartansson This book gathers together all of the Icelandic artist’s works related to music from 2001 onwards. It offers a first overview on his practice of performance (ISBN: 978-3-03764-303-7).
Das Kunstfeld A study of contemporary art’s actors, this book is edited by sociologist UIf Wuggenig and Migros Museum’s Director Heike Munder and includes the results of a long study and collection of datas on contemporary art’s reception. It attempts to map out the art landscape from the point of view of social sciences (German edition, ISBN: 978-3-03764-300-6).
Also Available: The Razzle Dazzle of Thinking Edited by Fredrik Liew
Edited by Sturtevant
Authors Daniel Birnbaum Bruce Hainley Fredrik Liew Paul McCarthy Stéphanie Moisdon Beatrix Ruf
Author Anne Dressen Bruce Hainley Fabrice Hergott Sturtevant
English / Swedish edition Available ISBN: 978-3-03764-282-5 Softcover, 130 x 210 mm 108 pages Images 53 color / 10 b/w CHF 27 / EUR 19 / GBP 16 / US 24.95
English / French edition Available ISBN: 978-3-03764-090-6 Hardcover, 232 x 304 mm 304 pages Images 110 color / 3 b/w CHF 58 / EUR 39 / GBP 25 / US 55
Hans Ulrich Obrist
8 Best-Seller Photo: Juergen Teller
You’ve often mentioned the importance of different paces within your curatorial and critical work, either slowing down or speeding things up to obtain results that would escape the routine of “usual formats.”
Lionel Bovier
One can imagine that, in the near future, when the entire archive is tagged, the different protagonists can start to talk to each other and it can all become an evolving, never-ending, and polyphonic novel of our time
The least one can say regarding publications is that you’ve chosen the second option … You’ve become a true “book-machine”! And we, of course, have added to this with the release of “A Brief History of Curating,” as it has not only been reprinted regularly, but also translated into Italian, Brazilian, and Czech, and soon into Chinese, Korean, and Russian … I believe that, behind the energy you put into producing the content of this book and your generosity in letting it be published in all kind of different contexts, lies a profound interest in the question of the dissemination and circulation of ideas. In a way, it connects with projects like “Do it” … Books have always been an important part of my curatorial activity. It started with the first exhibition in my kitchen, which resulted in a series of artists’ books in a box. Ever since, I have been interested in editing artists’ books and exhibitions in book form, such as “Do it,” an anthology of artists’ instructions, or the formulas for the 21st century. Besides this are the interview books; I have so far recorded 2’500 hours of interviews and this can lead to all kinds of books. The interviews can be compiled according to geographies—all my London interviews or all my China interviews, etc. Or they can be ordered according to different fields and topics, like all my interviews with composers or architects. The “Brief History of Curating” book is part of this category. I became interested to find out more about the history of my own field, and who the curators were from previous
Hans Ulrich Obrist
generations who offer a toolbox for the 21st century. Panofsky once said that we always invent the future from the fragments of the past. Now, to answer your question on speed and slowness, JeanPhilippe Toussaint has just written an amazing new book on urgency and patience; for books we always need both urgency and patience. “A Brief History of Curating” has been acknowledged as a source book for students and professional alike; for someone like you, who believes in the importance of “oral history” and alternative methodologies for art history, I think it’s an interesting sign of recognition, as well as a meaningful echo of your understanding of the curator as a “passeur” in the Benjaminian sense, a recessive and intermediary figure. I hope that books can be toolboxes. “A Brief History of Curating” felt very necessary, as many of the pioneering curatorial ideas of previous decades are poorly documented and I felt the urge to follow Eric Hobsbawm’s “protest against forgetting” and bring these ideas back to life. The curator is indeed a “passeur” and Benjamin was an influence; but also Robert Walser who taught me that everything is in-between. During my adolescence I read Carl Seelig’s book about his famous walks with Robert Walser again and again. It is this book that gave me the idea to start to record and write down the conversations I have with artists. Jonas Mekas gave me the idea to film them, so since 1994 all the interviews exist also in film form.
Interview by Lionel Bovier
“A Brief History of Curating” is now, since this year, available as an e-book, on iPad, Kobo, and Kindle formats; how do you envision the importance and the development of these formats in the near future? I am excited that “A Brief History” exists as an e-book and in other digital formats. I think digital technology will be very useful for making accessible my archive of filmed interviews. We have started a project with the University in Karlsruhe and the Los Angeles-based Institute of the 21st Century to digitize my archive. So all the interviews I did with Cedric Price were tagged and are now online and one can put in keywords like “Fun Palace” and then see all the moments Cedric talks about this visionary and unrealized art center. One can imagine that, in the near future, when the entire archive is tagged, the different protagonists can start to talk to each other and it can all become an evolving, neverending, and polyphonic novel of our time. The new volume we are working on, “A Brief History of New Music,” is an anthology of interviews with avant-garde, experimental, and cult composers, tracking the evolution of music from Stockhausen to electro-acoustic, and bringing to the fore figures such as Tony Conrad, Brian Eno, and Kraftwerk. I would say that this interest in music is one of your “horizontal” translations from the field of visual arts to another field, as you did with architecture, for instance. Would you agree? Alexander Dorner, the most visionary museum director of the first half of the 20th century, said in his book “Ways Beyond
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Art” that if we want to understand the forces effective in visual arts, it is important to understand what is happening in music, in literature, in architecture, in science, etc. After an initial phase focused on art, I started, from 1991 onward, to carry out intense research in science and architecture, which led to projects such as “Cities on the Move” and “Laboratorium.” When Rem Koolhaas invited me in 2000 to co-curate with himself, Stefano Boeri, and Sanford Kwinter, the millennium show “MUTATIONS,” I focused on the invisible city, the rumor city, and the city soundscape. This show triggered an intense research in sound and many interviews with composers. Many of these interviews are now gathered together in this book, such as the conversation that Philippe Parreno and I had with Pierre Boulez about polyphony and scores (and scores of scores). This conversation was itself the trigger for “Il Tempo del Postino,” the opera Philippe and I co-curated for The Manchester International Festival and Art Basel/Beyeler Foundation at the Stadt Theater in Basel. In general, how would you describe the importance of printed matter in your practice and, specifically, how would you define the relationship between curatorial practice and publishing? An exhibition in printed-matter form is as important as an exhibition in an exhibition space. I have never curated a show that has not produced either a book, an artist’s book, or a pamphlet. Curating is like running a book machine; and as Anthony Powell wrote, “books do furnish a room.”
Best-selling Title: Hans Ulrich Obrist — A Brief History of Curating Edited by Lionel Bovier Authors Daniel Birnbaum, Christophe Cherix Hans Ulrich Obrist English edition ISBN 978-3-905829-55-6 Softcover, 150 x 210 mm 246 pages CHF 24 / EUR 15 / GBP 12.95 / US 24.95 E-book edition ISBN: 978-3-03764-264-1 (i-Tunes, Barnes and Nobles, Kobo) ISBN: 978-3-03764-292-4 (Kindle)
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The artist’s book “J.R. Plaza Archive” sets out to assemble a series of theoretical and literary digressions by writers, philosophers, and poets, on 20 of the works that Bonillas has created from the material of an archive that belonged to his grandfather (ISBN: 978-3-03764-247-4).
Nina Fischer / Maroan el Sani This publication shows the process of developing and realizing the film installation “Spelling Dystopia,” about the Japanese island Hashima, once the most densely populated place on earth, a coal mine until 1974, and today an abandoned island and the subject of many fictions in mangas and movies (ISBN: 978-3-03764-275-7).
Recently Published in the Christoph Keller Editions Series
Inaki Bonillas
Das Institut
Christoph Keller Editions Series
“Das Institut” was founded in New York in 2007 by Kerstin Brätsch (*1979) and Adele Röder (*1980) as a notional free space in which they both gave themselves the opportunity of working independently from the concept of their own oeuvres, for their promotion and reproduction. Taking an ironic approach to themselves, and using great verbal wit, they have tackled the strategies of (self-)marketing head on. The fast-tempo artistic pingpong game between the two agency proprietors Brätsch and Röder can be followed in detail in this artist’s book. Each smuggles her works into the agency as models for further processing by the other.
New Relations in Art and Society An anthology of texts on sociallyengaged art, stemming from Mischa Kuball “New Pott” project, including newly commissioned essays and contributions by Claire Bishop, Thomas Hirschhorn, Jacques Rancière, Lawrence Weiner, etc. (English/German edition, ISBN: 978-3-03764-189-7).
The Robert Johnson Book A publication dedicated to the Robert Johnson club near Frankfurt, internationally renowned for its music programming and faithful attendance (ISBN: 978-3-03764-274-0).
The Book: DAS INSTITUT. Triennial Report 2011—2009 Edited by Katharina Hegewisch von Perfall Kathrin Jentjens Anja Nathan-Dorn Sandra Patron Beatrix Ruf Authors Manfred Hermes Seth Price English/German edition Available ISBN: 978-3-03764-231-3 Softcover, 210 x 297 mm 376 pages Images 1200 color / 20 b/w CHF 60 / EUR 45 / GBP 38 / US 59.95
Sources of inspiration, costs, sales revenue, and exhibition techniques are frankly disclosed. What at first looks like a strong overstatement that treads on a fine line between art, knitwear, role play, and marketing is at the same time a trenchant observation of the art scene, and a plea for artistic experiment and the potential of painting.
Raymond Pettibon New Monograph
New Releases in the Kunsthalle Zurich Series
“Whuytuyp,” Pettibon’s new monograph, focuses on works made since 2006, offering a comprehensive classification and investigation of this period characterized as one of meaningful change. It opens a new perspective on the work of the American artist, who came to be known in the art world for his comic-book-like drawings to which he appends disconcerting and sarcastic texts. Edited and written by Lynn Kost, the book assembles 50 large new works, sometimes using collage and gouache and inspired by a varied range of literary and cultural sources.
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Town-Gown Conflict The book documents a project by Lucy McKenzie, Verena Dengler, Lucile Desamory, Caitlin Keogh, Beca Lipscombe, pelican avenue, and Elizabeth Radcliffe, exploring textiles by artists and designers and questioning (applied) art and fashion relations (ISBN: 978-3-03764-288-7).
Karl Holmqvist A new artist’s book, “’K” from Karl Holmqvist (born 1960 in Västerås, lives and works in Berlin and Stockholm), explores different levels of textual interaction with art. Both as concrete poems or language “drawings,” in which words and letters come to form patterns, and through repetitions somewhere between sense and non-sense, figuration and abstraction. His work may also take the form of longer spoken word poems intended for performance readings, again investigating the formats of repetition and variation, but with more of a rhythmic and musical structure tied to memory training techniques and oral tradition. Substantial parts of the book’s material are in fact gathered as “loans” from other artists, forming something of a mini-collection of language-art practices and references from Zurich and Berlin Dada, Futurism, Vorticism, Lettrisme, and onward to more contemporary formulations from artists such as Ferdinand Kriwet and Shannon Ebner. Softcover, 324 pages, English (ISBN: 978-3-03764-293-1).
The Book: Raymond Pettibon — Whuytuyp Edited by Lynn Kost Author Lynn Kost English edition Available ISBN: 978-3-03764-290-0 Hardcover, 205 x 286 mm 64 pages CHF 38/EUR 25/ GBP 17/US 35
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Artists’ books are understood to be books or booklets produced by artists using mass-production methods, and in (theoretically) unlimited numbers, in which the artist documents or realizes art ideas or artworks
Clive Phillpot Booktrek
Documents Series
A former librarian at Chelsea School of Art in London, Clive Phillpot became the Director of the Library at MoMA in New York in 1977, and mapped out the field of artists’ books from an institutional point of view. Collaborating with Printed Matter and Franklin Furnace among other places dedicated to the medium of the book, Phillpot helped raise awareness to these objects, while giving them the necessary credentials to enter museums. This book is a first collection of his writings and will prove an invaluable reference for all those interested in the evolution of artists’ books and their perception in the art world.
Text by Clive Phillpot (Excerpted from his Introduction)
more of a radical break in the twentieth century than Cubism had been, and these slight publications were manifestations of this break (…) Over a period of time, since I was often talking about this phenomenon that I defined then as “book art,” people began to bring in curious publications to show me, File Magazine for example, while other works simply arrived in the mail. Then it suddenly struck me that students might come and visit the library to see and handle art, not just reproductions of art in conventional publications via secondary images or presented through words: they could come for art. Here is a book that is an artwork! This revelation presented me with a way to foreground the college library by presenting future practising artists with unmediated access to art, albeit in book form, and to sidestep the library’s role in compulsory education.
Also Available on the Same Topics
My trek through the fields of artists’ books began with my arrival at Chelsea School of Art Library in 1970, after a period spent in public libraries, latterly in the south of England. I was dropped into the art scene in London at a time when the influence of American art was evident and when Artforum was required reading (…) I began to assess my professional role in this new academic environment, in particular how I might make the library more relevant to art students (…) Coincidentally I was gradually becoming aware of certain unusual publications that were coming regularly through the mail (…) Among these publications were, what I would then have called “odd pamphlets,” but which might now be called “artists’ books” (…) They were very different from previous interactions between the artist and the book. For me conceptualism was even
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Artist-Run Spaces Edited by Gabriele Detterer and Maurizio Nannucci, this volume brings to light the “network” of independent and alternative spaces in the 1960s and 1970s and underlines the importance of artists’ publications in this context (ISBN: 978-3-03764-191-0).
In Numbers A sourcebook on serial publications by artists since 1955, this illustrated anthology provides invaluable information on this genre of publication (ISBN: 978-3-03764-085-2).
FILE Megazine The complete reprint of one of the most influential artists’ publication, edited by General Idea between 1972 and 1989 (ISBN: 978-3-905829-21-1).
The Book: Clive Phillpot: Booktrek Edited by Lionel Bovier Authors Christophe Cherix Clive Phillpot English Winter 2012 ISBN: 978-3-03764-207-8 Softcover, 150 x 210 mm 160 pages Images 50 b/w CHF 30 / EUR 20 / GBP 15 / US 29.95
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Paulina Olowska
Reference Monograph
In the past two decades, Poland has emerged as a nexus for switched-on contemporary art. Among the main figures of this vivid Polish scene is Paulina Olowska, born in 1976 in Gdansk, and now living in the region of Krakow, near Rabka, after years in London, Berlin, and the US.
Painting can be the most radical medium as it has this great power that it can derive from history
Since the beginning of the 2000s, Paulina Olowska is building a body of works that combines a wide variety of influences: references to modernist utopias encounter the autobiographical; pop culture meets the visual remains of Warsaw Pact Socialism. Painting, collage, but also design, performance, neon works, books, film, and curating are all tools she’s using to synthetize capitalism’s vision of Eastern Europe and Eastern Europe’s vision of Western world. In her series of paintings “Applied Fantastic” (2010) for instance, she shows models striking poses in snazzy 1980s knitwear. Typically, this take on consumer mores is shot through
with Soviet bloc touches, from a knitted Cossack hat to a male model’s copious moustache. Indeed, rather than referencing ads for branded clothing lines, the paintings are based on Polish patterns for fashion-forward home-knitters. In her work, Paulina Olowska often refers to feminine figures such as the Polish painter and graphic designer Zofia Stryjenska, the Belgian dancer Arakova, the fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli, or the writers Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf. She also created projects with Bonnie Camplin, Frances Stark, and Lucy McKenzie. With the latter, they run the now legendary Nova Popularna bar in Warsaw, 2003.
Paulina Olowska conceived the graphic design and wall paintings of the Puppet Theater in Rabka
Text by Clément Dirié
15 New Releases
Jason Rhoades Delayed for almost a year, the book revisits Rhoades’ most important installation, “Perfect World” (2000). It includes a complete documentation on the project as well as commissioned essays by Eva MeyerHermann, Paul McCarthy, and Ralph Rugoff (ISBN: 978-3-03764-226-9).
Paul Thek Written by Susanne Neubauer, the book contains unpublished documentation on Thek’s first space-filling environment, “Pyramid/A Work in Progress.” English edition (ISBN: 978-3-03764-253-5).
Paulina Olowska’s studio, March 2012
Paulina Olowska in front of the Tadeusz Kantor’s “cricoteka” theater, Krakow
John Miller The Ruin of Exchange A new anthology of critical texts by the American artist, edited by Alexander Alberro. English edition (ISBN: 978-3-03764-194-1).
The Book: Paulina Olowska Edited by Lionel Bovier Authors Adam Szymczyk Jan Verwoert English Fall 2012 ISBN: 978-3-03764-287-0 Softcover, 237 x 286 mm 160 pages Images 100 color CHF 60 / EUR 40 / GBP 25 / US 55
Art and the City Edited by Christoph Doswald, this anthology includes contributions by artists such as Doug Aitken, Ai Weiwei, Lara Almarcegui, Los Carpinteros, Valentin Carron, Martin Creed, Roe Ethridge, Matias Faldbakken, Yona Friedman, Hamish Fulton, Christian Jankowski, San Keller, Paul McCarthy, Matt Mullican, Taiyo Onorato/ Nico Krebs, Manfred Pernice, Charlotte Posenenske, Bettina Pousttchi, Fred Sandback, Frank Stella, and Oscar Tuazon (ISBN: 978-3-03764-296-2).
New release: Raymond Pettibon, “Whuytuyp” (ISBN: 978-3-03764-290-0)
18 John Armleder Emory Douglas (Photo: © V.L.) Scott King (Photo: © V.L.)
Information
8 rue Saint-Bon is open on Fridays and Saturdays and by appointment Contact: +33 (0) 1 58 30 39 39 info@8ruesaintbon.fr & Facebook For more information about the program of the five partners: www.lespressesdureel.com www.annasandersfilms.com www.editionsmacula.com www.bureaudesvideos.com www.jrp-ringier.com
8 rue Saint-Bon, Paris
New Location
Since 2010, 8 rue Saint-Bon has established itself as an independent project space in Paris, dedicated to curatorial propositions born from the editorial programs of the five partners sharing this location—the film producer Anna Sanders Films; the publishing houses Les presses du réel, Macula, and JRP|Ringier; and the art video distribution and production company Art View/bureau des vidéos. Curated by Lionel Bovier and Clément Dirié (Art View), 8, rue Saint-Bon regularly organizes events, book launches, and exhibitions. Among its recent projects: an exhibition of drawings by John Armleder; “Tubular Bells” by British artist Scott King; the presentations of publications by Karma Books (New York) and MAMCO (Geneva); an exhibition of posters conceived in the 1970s by the Black Panther Ministry of Culture Emory Douglas; and “Vive le
Lettrisme!,” a show dedicated to the French Lettrist movement, exhibiting rare editions and photographic documentation of one of the last avant-gardes of the 20th century. In the months to come, the eclectic and dynamic programming at 8 rue Saint-Bon will include, among others, the Brazilian poet Augusto de Campos, Kateřina Sedá, Yto Barrada, and Atelier, a label founded by fashion designer Beca Lipscombe and artist Lucy McKenzie.
Kunstgriff Bookstore, Zurich New Location
19 Markus Schmutz & Lionel Bovier Lukas Haller
The new Kunstgriff bookstore by JRP|Ringier is situated at the main entrance of the new Löwenbräukunst, the Swiss hub for contemporary art in Zurich, which hosts the Kunsthalle Zürich, the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, as well as the new ARTUMA space, established galleries such as Hauser & Wirth and Bob van Oursow, and up-and-coming ones such as Freymond-Guth & Co. Kunstgriff ’s display includes a wide range of reference monographs and artists’ books, as well as sold-out and hard-to-find books, an eclectic selection of magazines, and special editions and multiples. It regularly hosts events and book launches and this year it is the special venue for Artists’ Records. Experienced Bookstore Manager Markus Schmutz and his team (including his dog Beuys) will be happy to present you his internationally-focused selection of contemporary art books at Limmatstrasse 270, Zurich. Information
Kunstgriff Limmatstrasse 270 8005 Zurich Switzerland Contact: +41 (0)44 272 90 66 www.kunstgriff.ch info@kunstgriff.ch
20 Vít Havránek
Vít Havránek
Associate Editor
Vít Havránek
Vít Havránek (*1971) is the director of tranzit space in Prague and has been an Associate Editor at JRP|Ringier since 2004. A curator and critic, he has acted as an indefatigable “passeur” (in the Benjaminian sense) of many projects originating in Central and Eastern Europe into the publisher’s program. What is your background and how did you come to head the Czech tranzit space? I studied art history at the Charles University in Prague; it was a rather classical education in art history. Then I worked as a curator at the National and then the Municipal Gallery in Prague, the two state-run modern and contemporary art museums in the city. When we started tranzit, in 2002, we didn’t want a stereotypical “public space”: the plan was rather to work on the basis of producing artworks, events, and books. After a few years, when the activities multiplied, it was suddenly clear that tranzit needed its own space to systematically negotiate with various partners. Today, we run the space in collaboration between two entities, tranzit and display gallery, former artists-run spaces.
What is the importance of publications within your curatorial activities, and do you think books are particularly relevant within art’s development in former Eastern European countries? In the case of collective exhibitions or similar events, I always try to think and conceive of the publication in parallel to the exhibition. By “parallel,” I mean independently from certain functions that an exhibition routine imposes on a catalogue, for instance. Of course a publication can be a record of a temporary event, document a site-specific installation in the space, or provide an overview of the artist’s work, but I think a book has much more interesting potentials: one can compare the book editing process to an architectural methodology, one that may let various aspects (social, formal, emotional, or even mystical concepts) organize the
Eva Kotatkova, collage, 2011
Interview by Lionel Bovier
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discussion and to re-inscribe them into a field of referentiality, mainly for contemporary artists to be able deal with the exceptional figures of the 1960s and 1970s.
What new publishing projects you are working on? Right now we are working on a artist’s book by Eva Kotatkova, an artist who is deeply interested in the methods and effects of the education that she underwent during the 1980s in Communist Czechoslovakia. She is trying to deconstruct or analyze The “tranzit” series you are editing for JRP|Ringier the frustration stemming from this rather bridges generations in a quite unusual way, not rigid conception of a child in the adminonly by simultaneously publishing artists of the istrative totalitarian system. She has taken 1960s and 1970s and of the 1990s and 2000s, an existing book—an educational “bible” but also by organizing collaborations between of this period—and intervenes in it them. How do you explain this specificity? with her drawings and collages, and also The main motivation of this intergen- includes “discriminated” voices, those erational perspective comes from the fact missing in the “normal” education of a that the split of generations in this region child of this period. We are also working was quite radical, and created a situation of on a book mapping out the activity of strong fragmentation of aesthetic practices, two photographers—Martin Polak and discourses, and theoretical statements; we Lukas Jasansky—who provide an ironic thus try to bring them back to a common record of everyday life from the 1980s.
Atlas of Transformation
Eva Kotatkova (Photo: Jiri Thyn)
presentation of an art practice or any knowledge. So far, books like “Atlas of Transformation” (conceived as a dictionary structured around subjective graphs and maps), tranzit’s contribution to the last Manifesta catalogue (a gigantic poster that was cut a posteriori to enter the book), and “Autobiographies” (a collection of autobiographies written by artists participating in a group exhibition), are the best examples of the potentials of this development.
Promises of the Past — A Discontinuous History of Art in Former Eastern Europe Edited by Zbynek Baladran Vit Havranek
Edited by Christine Macel Nataaa Petresin
Authors Hakim Bey, Homi K. Bhabha Boris Groys, Karl Holmqvist Frederic Jameson, Ilja Kabakov Viktor Misiano, Chantal Mouffe Lia Perjovschi, Slavoj Zizek
Authors Vit Havranek, Christine Macel Joanna Mytkowska, Natasa Petresin Jan Verwoert, Igor Zabel Slavoj Zizek English edition Available ISBN: 978-3-03764-099-9 Softcover, 220 x 280 mm 256 pages Images 176 color / 110 b/w CHF 68 / EUR 44.9 / GBP 35 / US 65
English edition Available ISBN: 978-3-03764-147-7 Softcover, 160 x 220 mm 724 pages Images 54 color / 82 b/w CHF 48 / EUR 32 / GBP 24 / US 45 KwieKulik
Boris Ondreicka — Hi! Lo. Edited by Lukasz Ronduda Georg Schöllhammer
Edited by Vit Havranek
Authors Jacek Dobrowolski, Maciej Gdula Klara Kemp-Welch, Zofia Kulik Przemyslaw Kwie, Ewa Majewska Sitkowska Maryla, Pawel Moscicki Luiza Nader, Tomasz Zaluski
English edition Available ISBN: 978-3-03764-234-4 Softcover, 340 x 210 mm 400 pages Images 110 b/w CHF 42 / EUR 30 / GBP 24 / US 39.95
English October 2012 ISBN: 978-3-03764-299-3 Hardcover, 240 x 300 mm 576 pages Images 791 color / 1017 b/w CHF 65 / EUR 49 / GBP 39 / US 69.95
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Ericka Beckman
DVDs by BDV
Your Super-8 Trilogy (1978–1980) makes direct reference to Piaget’s theories of learning processes. Additionally, these works make use of rules, games, and, more precisely, sport as a spatial and social transcription of these rules. How did you become interested in these questions and how did they come to structure your early works as a whole? As a young artist I was looking for a language to explain the relationship between the knowledge of self and movement in the physical world. I knew that movement was a language we learn long before we learn the language we speak. I discovered, through making short experimental works, that sound and image could be substituted for each other as long as the viewer understood the temporal and spatial coordinates. Somehow physical reality was a system more deeply ingrained in our consciousness than the expressive forms of language, image, or even music. So I abandoned all my philosophical readings and delved into Piaget. The first one I read was Genetic Epistemology, a very short book that synopsized all his research to date. That’s when I started the Super-8 Trilogy. The first film, We Imitate; We Break Up, deals with imitation and the formation of a stable identity. When challenged by change, it is through establishing regularity that identity becomes stable. The film is a display of physical actions between characters, or characters and obstacles, which start as uncoordinated and then achieve balance or stability. Then the actions displayed in the film become internal; creating a symbol that can stand in place for the action. In the second film, The Broken Rule, I set out to show how rules are formed. There are two kinds of rules. There are the rules or truths that you live by that are formed by a social consensus through the process of testing and acceptance. Then there are
Ericka Beckman
rules that are created by the individual that provide a sense of purpose and self-worth. They both carry real consequences. The question I carried as I made this film was: What makes a game more than a game? The Broken Rule was also, in part, a celebration of the artist Mike Kelley, who I had just discovered in California, and whose work and energy I felt represented the individual commitment to self-established rules, which I was embracing in this film. I created the final performance for him. The third film, Out of Hand, was a depiction of memory formation. I don’t exactly know what Piaget book I read for this film; it could have been a combination of Play and Imagination and The Creation of Myth and Memory in a Child. The boy in Out of Hand is the quintessential Peter Pan, who can’t move into adolescence and holds back to locate a nostalgic object from his childhood. However, his maturation is unavoidable. The first scene sets up the problem. He wakes up from a dream in which he sees himself being removed violently from his home. The film shows the path his mind takes as he searches his past for something he can only find in his future. To move into adulthood he must abandon his attachment to toys, and embrace a symbol that can represent those toys in his memory. The toy that comforted him as a child becomes the handle of a shield that protects him or shields him from the world beyond his home. In the last shot he lets go of it. This film represents the struggle in the emotions between childhood love
In Conversation with Lionel Bovier and Fabrice Stroun
You have mentioned in the past the influence of Jack Goldstein’s short films of the end of the 1970s–early 1980s. Do you remember what effect they had on a young artist like yourself coming out of CalArts? Was his notion of a “distanced spectacle” relevant to you at the time? I went to CalArts as a graduate student for two reasons: because I liked the percussionist John Bergamo who taught there and because I saw Jack Goldstein’s loops when I was visiting the campus before attending. Jack, who was living in New York at the time, was in Los Angeles producing those first loops and he was kind enough to show me his work. (...) This term “distanced spectacle” was not in my head at the time (...). A friend of mine, Tony Conrad, and I discussed distance in the mid-1980s in terms of
performance and identification in film viewing. We met to talk about super-8 film, which we were both engaged with. He had this theory that there was a distance between the screen image and the viewer and the distance between the viewer and his memory. If the distance between these three points is contracted there is immediate identification. The cues directed at you from action and image on the screen immediately register as real and pick up confirmation from your memory. However, once this distance is greater, it takes longer to either register what you see or understand what you see. This distance sets up a delay in your response. Your memory has to catch up and confirm what you see, making it somehow real. Tony was doing a lot of thinking about structural film and perception. I immediately saw how I could manipulate this distance by taking the easily assimilated images from my childhood and my culture, and perform them differently, so the audience could not rely on what they expected to see but instead had to assign a new meaning to them. I believe a lot of my friends and myself looked to images that we could appropriate from our past, because we were transformed so radically by the TV and radio we watched and listened to. Inner time and maturation were marked by episodes of TV shows and music. We clung to their short-lived status and listened and looked deep into their sounds and images. The media experience of my youth was linear and each new sequel, news story, or new album changed or wiped out the one before, in a blotter effect.
New Releases in the First Monograph Series (Fall 2012)
and direct attachment to objects of love, to a more mediated reality, where love can exist in your mind and no longer be in your present. The toy is no longer present but has been absorbed in this new understanding; it exists as a vibrant symbol in the formation of this new understanding. At this time in my life when I made the Super-8 Trilogy, I read Piaget’s books very loosely, almost with a poetic freedom to just enjoy his tests and the children’s response to his tests. But I also tried to deeply absorb his definition of the successive levels of intelligence leading up to the acquisition of language. It established in me a love of logistics. His books showed how he structured the proof to support his theorems. This reading of Piaget’s scientific process gave me confidence to build my own logical systems.
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Ross Chisholm British artist (*1977) Ross Chisholm uses altered found photographs and imagery mined from centuries of visual culture to realize his paintings. With a newly commissioned essay by Jonathan Griffin and an interview by John Reardon (ISBN: 978-3-03764-261-0).
Ante Timmermans The Belgian artist (*1976) is one of the most active figures in the contemporary drawing scene. The monograph exists in three editions, English (ISBN: 978-3-03764-278-8), French (ISBN: 978-3-03764-279-5), and German (ISBN: 978-3-03764-295-5).
Pierre Joseph With his fellow French artists Philippe Parreno, Dominique GonzalezFoerster, and Pierre Huyghe, Pierre Joseph (*1958) contributed in the early 1990s to what is now called “the relational aesthetic.” This first monograph includes essays by Nicolas Bourriaud, Stéphanie Moisdon, and a discussion with Liam Gillick (ISBN: 978-3-03764-285-6).
The DVD: Ericka Beckman: The Super-8 Trilogy Edited by Lionel Bovier Authors Ericka Beckman Fabrice Stroun English Winter 2012 ISBN: 978-3-03764-259-7 DVD, 83 minutes CHF 50 / EUR 37 / GBP 30 / US 49.95
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In our work, 9-11 was a turning point. the world had been reduced to more binary terms, and it was necessary for us to find ways to express its complexity
Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige
Reference Monograph
Since the mid-1990s, Lebanese artists Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige (b. 1969, live and work in Beirut and Paris) have worked together in the visual arts and cinema, shooting documentaries and fiction films such as “I Want To See,” starring Catherine Deneuve and Rabih Mroué and screened at the Cannes Festival in 2008. Their practice is imbued with a distinctive aesthetic that occupies spheres of the visible and the fictional, nourishing a fascinating back and forth between life and fiction. Investigative processes, excavation, and the representations of historic, social, cultural, and political factors are at the heart of their work.
possess distinct circuits of production and distribution, a dual terrain in which they have established richly fertile ground. Through their practice the artists address and look to redefine existing regimes of representation to engage with questions of identity and memory and the individual and social subject. As artists for whom the practice of art constitutes a culturally “Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige work multivalent carving out of a public space primarily with the mediums of photogra- in which discourse and discussion are posphy and film. The reception of their work sible, the urgency of their practice cannot spans cinema and the visual arts, worlds be separated from the urgencies of life.” that, while increasingly connected, —Suzanne Cotter, in her essay “Stranger than Fiction”
The Book: Joana Hadjithomas / Khalil Joreige Edited by Clément Dirié Michèle Thériault Authors Suzanne Cotter Jean-Michel Frodon Michèle Thériault English Winter 2012 ISBN: 978-3-03764-240-5 Softcover, 237 x 286 mm 160 pages Images 100 color CHF 60 / EUR 40 / GBP 25 / US 55 French edition ISBN: 978-3-03764-294-8
Ai Weiwei Critical Anthology and DVD
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In 2007 Ai Weiwei (*1957 in Beijing), the wellknown Chinese artist, architect, curator, and documentary filmmaker, presented “Fairytale” at Europe’s most innovative five-yearly art event, documenta, in Kassel: he invited 1001 Chinese citizens of different ages and from various backgrounds to Germany to experience their own fairytale for 28 days… The project was judged one of the most sensational artworks of documenta 12. After producing a 152-minute film documenting the whole process last year (English edition, ISBN: 978-3-03764-153-8), we are now releasing the long-awaited reader on the project and its repercussions in critical and theoretical fields. Gathering together commissioned essays by Roger M. Buergel, Artistic Director of documenta 12; Catherine Wood, Curator of Contemporary Art/Performance at Tate Modern; Raphael Gygax, Curator at the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Zurich; Christian Höller, editor of “Springerin” magazine; and a discussion between the artist and Daniel Birnbaum, Director of Moderna Museet in Stockholm. Published with Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing/Lucerne.
The Book: Ai Weiwei: Fairytale: A Reader
Also Available: Ai Weiwei — Fairytale / Documentary Edited by Lionel Bovier Salome Schnetz Authors Daniel Birnbaum Roger Buergel Raphael Gygax Christian Höller English Fall 2012 ISBN: 978-3-03764-210-8 Softcover, 160 x 230 mm 248 pages Images 100 b/w CHF 32 / EUR 22 / GBP 18 / US 34.95
Filmed by Ai Weiwei English Available ISBN: 978-3-03764-153-8 DVD, 152 minutes CHF 38 / EUR 25 / GBP 17 / US 35
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Kateřina Šedá
Reference Monograph
Among the artists living today in Eastern Europe and developing their practice from the great shift that the year 1989 and its aftermath brought about, Kateřina Šedá (born in 1977 in Brno) is one of the most successful in linking contemporary issues and this post-Communist history. She uses media such as video, drawing, installation, and performance to develop her projects, usually in close relation with a community. I try never to define my practice as “art,” especially when I am trying to convince ordinary people to take part in my projects
“Kateřina Šedá’s work has often been described using metaphors borrowed from archaeology, since it establishes a specific analytical relationship with the past. However, archaeology proper is dedicated to the study of given strata that may be buried, but can still be uncovered by accident or systematic research and thus shed some light on the moment in which we live. Conversely, the artist’s aim is to actively procure the past while reading, as
it were, the actual history through the eyes of common people. The artist narrows the field of experiment to peripheral places and their populations. These places are usually considered “uninteresting” by the public at large, for, as the succinct title of one of Šedá’s projects states, There’s Nothing There. At best, this blank urban and social space generates weak meanings and barely audible messages that seem to contradict the TV-governed
Text by Adam Szymczyk (Excerpted from the Monograph)
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colorful picture of neoliberal spectacle, which is permanently administered to post-communist societies in the former Eastern Bloc. Where no event and no past can be articulated, Šedá comes in: she works through the blurred pictures of urban history tainted with individual stories in order to reveal the social and psychological dimension that remains hidden to the protagonists, who usually come to live in these places from ‘somewhere else.’ She applies the notion of archaeology to everyday life. ( … ) People possess and retain knowledge. The artist sees her task as making this knowledge a common good. Rendering things visible is a precondition for empowerment. It is an archaeology à rebours, in which the find is constituted in collective effort and emerges as circles of trusted friends or staged them in the presence of random passers by who were mostly unaware that ‘art’ was happening in front of their eyes. Artists in Eastern Europe embraced Conceptual art as a means of unmediated communication and a way out of the deadlock of the official public sphere, which was entirely regulated by the rulers and their ideology. Under these gloomy circumstances, everyday life could assume new meaning as an ongoing personalpolitical statement.”
The Book: Katerina Seda Edited by Fanni Fetzer Authors Fanni Fetzer Michal Hladik Vladimir Kokolia Ales Palan Adam Szymczyk English / German Available ISBN: 978-3-03764-273-3 Softcover, 237 x 286 mm 160 pages Images 239 color / 114 b/w CHF 60 / EUR 40 / GBP 25 / US 55
Martin Boyce
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Turner Prize Winner 2011
From our Backlist
When he disturbs the substance of the works of Arne Jacobsen, Mies van der Rohe, and Charles and Ray Eames, or when he builds his “fragile landscapes,� Martin Boyce (*1967, lives and works in Glasgow and Berlin) underlines the continuity between style, human habitat, and life. Distilling elements of familiar, anonymous urban environments, often appropriating iconic visual languages of classic modernist design, cinema, and architecture, Boyce weaves a complex web of associations in a process of describing and abstracting cultural and social spaces. The disquietening balance of opposites, of intimacy and distance, interior and exterior, beauty and tension within his installations, seems to amplify the unlocatable anxiety, paranoia, and dysfunction in contemporary cities at the same time as it encourages an almost nostalgic reverie.
From our Backlist
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The Book: Martin Boyce Authors Paul Elliman Catrin Lorch Caoimhin Mac Giolla Leith English Available ISBN: 978-3-905770-74-2 Softcover, 237 x 286 mm 160 pages Images 79 color / 26 b/w CHF 60 / EUR 40 / GBP 25 / US 55 French ISBN: 978-3-03764-041-8 German ISBN: 978-3-03764-040-1
30 Prizes for Books in 2011
Most Beautiful Swiss Books 2011
5 Bookshops
Five Bookshops We Love
ARCANA: Purveyors of fine new, out of print, and rare books on photography, art, fashion, design, architecture, and cinema since 1984
Wade Guyton Black Paintings
The Historic Helms Bakery 8675 Washington Boulevard Culver City, CA 90232 T +1 310-458-1499 sales@arcanabooks.com www.arcanabooks.com
Artist’s book Design: Joseph Logan Production: Musumeci, Aosta ISBN: 978-3-03764-166-8
Tue–Sun 11 am–7 pm
Fernand Baudin Prize Prize 2011
Molla Nasreddin The publication is part of the series of artists’ projects edited by Christoph Keller Edited and designed by Slavs and Tatars Production: Die Keure, Brugge ISBN: 978-3-03764-212-2
Photo-Eye Magazine: The Best Books of 2011
Elad Lassry First monograph, Kunsthalle Zürich series Edited by Beatrix Ruf Designed by Nicolas Eigenheer Production: Musumeci, Aosta ISBN: 978-3-03764-152-1
Libreria OOLP: Art bookshop in Italy, with Cobra Libros: THE art bookshop of a wide range of recent publications and a Buenos Aires! special focus on the art of gardening Cobra Libros Libreria OOLP Via Principe Amedeo, 29 10123 Torino Italy T +39 011 7122782 libreriaoolp@iol.it www.libreriaoolp.it
Aranguren 150 Caballito C1405CRD Buenos Aires T. +54 9 11 5943 3133 info@cobralibros.com.ar www.cobralibros.com.ar Mon–Sun 4.30–8.30 pm
Mon 3.30–7 pm Tue–Fri 9.30 am–7 pm Sat 10 am–1 pm/3.30–7 pm
Shelf: Shelf is a bookshop specializing in photography books Izumi Building 3-7-4 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku 150-0001 Tokyo Japan T +81 3 3405 7889 shelf@shelf.ne.jp www.shelf.ne.jp Mon–Fri 12 am–8 pm Sat–Sun 12 am–6 pm
Múltiplos: Múltiplos is a bookshop in Barcelona, located in the Raval neighborhood, surrounded by MACBA (Museum of Contemporary Art), and many contemporary art galleries “Múltiplos is specialized in artists’ books, and our catalogue includes international publications, with a main focus on those produced in Spain, Portugal and South America, which we also distribute worldwide.” Lleó, 6 08001 Barcelona T +34 933015818 info@multiplosbooks.org www.multiplosbooks.org Mon–Sat: 11 am–2 pm/5–9 pm
Collectors’ Editions Information and Orders at info@jrp-ringier.com
Hedi Slimane’s limited edition of “Anthology of a Decade”: 50 copies of the 4-volume publication are gathered together in a special clamshell box designed by the artist (each box is signed and numbered)
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Philippe Decrauzat “Trois films photographiés,” is a book published by the Centre d’édition contemporaine, Geneva, in a limited edition of 400 copies (288 pages, 181 × 284 mm). Each is made of 16-page signatures randomly assembled by the binder and is stamped and numbered on the front cover.
Scott King Second-hand record sleeves printed in hot-foil with the famous motif of Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells” album Edition of 40, each one unique
Loris Gréaud “Cellar Door Deluxe Edition” has been produced by GREAUDSTUDIO EDITIONS in 2011, as a showcase for the eponymous book published by JRP|Ringier. Engraved Plexiglas case, 33.7 × 46.5 x 5.1 cm, edition of 50 copies, signed and numbered
David Noonan Silkscreen print, 26 x 26 cm Includes silkscreen, artist’s box, and cloth-bound copy of “Scenes” Edition of 35
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Marcel Duchamp and the Forestay Waterfall
Valentin Carron Learning from Martigny
Tom Burr Extrospective
Liam Gillick Factories in the Snow
Linder Works 1976–2006
Sturtevant The Razzle Dazzle of Thinking
Mark Leckey 7 Windmill Street W1
Stefan Brüggemann
The Future Has A Silver Lining Genealogies of Glamour
A selection of 10 preferred titles from our backlist by design legend Peter Saville, whose book, “Estate,” belongs to the classics of JRP|Ringier’s program
Photo: Wolfgang Stahr
Half Square Half Crazy
Peter Saville’s Top 10
Contacts
Distributors
JRP | Ringier Letzigraben 134 / CH–8047 Zurich T +41 (0) 43 311 27 50 F +41 (0) 43 311 27 51
JRP | Ringier books are available internationally at selected bookstores and from the following distribution partners:
E info@jrp-ringier.com www.jrp-ringier.com ISBN 978-3-03764-281-8
© 2012, the authors, the artists, the photographers, and JRP | Ringier Kunstverlag
Design Gavillet & Rust/Devaud, Geneva Typefaces Genath by François Rappo (www.optimo.ch) Nameit by Jeremy Schorderet
Top Ten
For a list of our partner bookshops or for any general questions, please contact JRP | Ringier directly at info@jrp-ringier.com, or visit our homepage www.jrp-ringier. com for further information about our program.
Switzerland
Germany & Austria
AVA Verlagsauslieferung AG, Centralweg 16, CH–8910 Affoltern a.A., verlagsservice@ava.ch, www.ava.ch
Vice Versa Vertrieb, Immanuelkirchstrasse 12, D–10405 Berlin, info@vice-versa-vertrieb.de, www.vice-versa-vertrieb.de
France
UK & other European countries
Les presses du réel, 35 rue Colson, F–21000 Dijon, info@lespressesdureel.com, www.lespressesdureel.com
Cornerhouse Publications, 70 Oxford Street, UK–Manchester M1 5NH, publications@cornerhouse.org, www.cornerhouse.org/books
USA, Canada, Asia, & Australia ARTBOOK | D.A.P., 155 Sixth Avenue, 2nd Floor, NY 10013, dap@dapinc.com, www.artbook.com