World Food Books' programme is largely produced on Kulin Nation land. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the first and continuing custodians of this land, and pay respect to their Elders past, present, and emerging.
World Food Books is an arts and special interests bookshop in Naarm / Melbourne. Founded in 2010, World Food Books is devoted to the presentation of a rotating, hand-selection of international art, design, literary and counterculture publications with an emphasis on the anti-traditional, the experimental, the avant-garde, the heretic, the marginal.
Presenting new titles alongside rare and out-of-print books, catalogues and journals spanning the fields of modern and contemporary art, design, photography, illustration, film, literature, poetry, cultural theory, philosophy, sexuality, popular and underground culture in its many radical forms, World Food Books wishes to encourage adventurous, thoughtful and open-minded reading, looking, writing, and exchange of publishing and ideas, both current and historical.
As well as our bookshop, located in Melbourne's historical Nicholas Building, all of our inventory is available internationally via our online mail-order service.
World Food Books semi-regularly co-ordinates "Occasions", a programme of exhibits and events at the bookshop and in partnership with other hosts (such as museums and art galleries) that develop out of the activities, relationships and content of the bookshop itself.
World Food Books
The Nicholas Building
37 Swanston Street
Room 5, Level 6
Melbourne 3000
Australia
SHOP HOURS:
THU—FRI 12—6 PM
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
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All prices in AUD (Australian dollars)
Pick-Ups
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after order date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 2 weeks of ordering as we have limited storage space. Orders will be released back into stock if not collected within this time. No refunds can be made for pick-ups left un-collected. If you cannot make it in to the bookshop in this time-frame, please choose postage option.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund or exchange) for items received in error. All our orders are packed with special care using heavy-duty padding and cardboard book-mailers or bubble mailers (for smaller books), using reinforcement where required. We cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels.
Insurance
Should you wish to insure your package, please email us directly after placing your order and we can organise this at a small extra expense. Although all standard/express tracked packages are very safe and dependable, we cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels. We recommend insurance on valuable orders.
Interested in selling your old books, catalogues, journals, magazines, comics, fanzines, ephemera? We are always looking for interesting, unusual and out-of-print books to buy. We only buy books in our fields of interest and specialty, and that we feel we can resell.
We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels. We offer cash, store credit, and can take stock on consignment. All
about 25% of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Sell your books any day of the week. You can drop them off and return later. If you have a lot of books, we can visit your Sydney home.
We buy books that we feel we can resell. We offer about 25 % of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Philadelphia Wireman
03 August - 01 September, 2018
World Food Books is proud to announce our next Occasion, the first presentation of sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman in Australia.
The Philadelphia Wireman sculptures were found abandoned in an alley off Philadelphia’s South Street on trash night in 1982. Their discovery in a rapidly-changing neighbourhood undergoing extensive renovation, compounded with the failure of all attempts to locate the artist, suggests that the works may have been discarded after the maker’s death. Dubbed the "Philadelphia Wireman" during the first exhibition of this work, in 1985, the maker’s name, age, ethnicity, and even gender remain uncertain. The entire collection totals approximately 1200 pieces, all intricately bound together with tightly-wound heavy-gauge wire (along with a few small, abstract marker drawings, reminiscent both of Mark Tobey and J.B. Murry). The dense construction of the work, despite a modest range of scale and materials, is singularly obsessive and disciplined in design: a wire armature or exoskeleton firmly binds a bricolage of found objects including plastic, glass, food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, rubber, batteries, pens, leather, reflectors, nuts and bolts, nails, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools, and jewellery.
Heavy with associations—anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and socio-cultural responses to wrapped detritus—the totemic sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman have been discussed in the context of work created to fulfil the shamanistic needs of alternative religions in American culture. Curators, collectors, and critics have variously compared certain pieces to sculpture from Classical antiquity, Native American medicine bundles, African-American memory jugs, and African fetish objects. Reflecting the artist’s prolific and incredibly focused scavenging impulse, and despite—or perhaps enhanced by—their anonymity, these enigmatic objects function as urban artefacts and arbiters of power, though their origin and purpose is unknown. Philadelphia Wireman, whatever their identity, possessed an astonishing ability to isolate and communicate the concepts of power and energy through the selection and transformation of ordinary materials. Over the course of the past two decades, this collection has come to be regarded as an important discovery in the field of self-taught art and vernacular art.
Presented in collaboration with Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, and Robert Heald, Wellington.
Susan Te Kahurangi King
02 February - 10 March, 2018
Susan Te Kahurangi King (24 February 1951 - ) has been a confident and prolific artist since she was a young child, drawing with readily available materials - pencils, ballpoint pens and felt-tip markers, on whatever paper is at hand. Between the ages of four and six Susan slowly ceased verbal communication. Her grandparents William and Myrtle Murphy had developed a special bond with Susan so they took on caring responsibilities for extended periods. Myrtle began informally archiving her work, carefully collecting and storing the drawings and compiling scrapbooks. No drawing was insignificant; every scrap of paper was kept. The King family are now the custodians of a vast collection containing over 7000 individual works, from tiny scraps of paper through to 5 meter long rolls.
The scrapbooks and diaries reveal Myrtle to be a woman of great patience and compassion, seeking to understand a child who was not always behaving as expected. She encouraged Susan to be observant, to explore her environment and absorb all the sights and sounds. Myrtle would show Susan’s drawings to friends and people in her community that she had dealings with, such as shopkeepers and postal workers, but this was not simply a case of a grandmother’s bias. She recognised that Susan had developed a sophisticated and unique visual language and sincerely believed that her art deserved serious attention.
This was an unorthodox attitude for the time. To provide some context, Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut in 1945 to describe work created by self-taught artists – specifically residents of psychiatric institutions and those he considered to be visionaries or eccentrics. In 1972 Roger Cardinal extended this concept by adopting the term Outsider Art to describe work made by non-academically trained artists operating outside of mainstream art networks through choice or circumstance. Susan was born in Te Aroha, New Zealand in 1951, far from the artistic hubs of Paris and London that Dubuffet and Cardinal operated in. That Myrtle fêted Susan as a self-taught artist who deserved to be taken seriously shows how progressive her attitudes were.
Susan’s parents Doug and Dawn were also progressive. Over the years they had consulted numerous health practitioners about Susan’s condition, as the medical establishment could not provide an explanation as to why she had lapsed into silence. Dawn educated herself in the field of homeopathy and went on to treat all twelve of her children using these principles – basing prescriptions on her observations of their physical, mental and emotional state.
Doug was a linguist with an interest in philosophy who devoted what little spare time he had to studying Maori language and culture. To some extent their willingness to explore the fringes of the mainstream made them outsiders too but it was their commitment to living with integrity and their respect for individuality that ensured Susan’s creativity was always encouraged.
Even though Susan’s family supported her artistic pursuits, some staff in schools and hospitals saw it as an impediment to her assimilation into the community and discouraged it in a variety of ways. Her family was not always aware of this and therefore did not fully understand why Susan stopped drawing in the early 1990s. However, rather than dwell on the challenges that Susan faced in pursuit of her artistic practice, they prefer to highlight her achievements. In 2008 Susan began drawing again in earnest, after an almost 20 year interruption, and her work is now shown in galleries around the world.
Susan grew up without television and has been heavily influenced by the comics she read as a child. She is absolutely fearless in the appropriation of recognizable characters, such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, in her work. She twists their limbs, contorts their faces, compresses them together, blends them into complex patterned backgrounds - always imbuing them with an incredible energy. Although Susan often used pop culture characters in her work they are not naive or childlike. These are drawings by a brilliant self-taught artist who has been creating exceptional work for decades without an audience in mind.
Mladen Stilinović
"Various Works 1986 - 1999"
02 February 16 - September 10, 2016
Various works 1986 - 1999, from two houses, from the collections of John Nixon, Sue Cramer, Kerrie Poliness, Peter Haffenden and Phoebe Haffenden.
Including: Geometry of Cakes (various shelves), 1993; Poor People’s Law (black and white plate), 1993; White Absence (glasses, ruler, set square, silver spoon, silver ladel with skin photograph and wooden cubes), 1990-1996; Exploitation of the Dead (grey and red star painting, wooden painting, black spoon with red table, red plate), 1984-1990; Money and Zeros (zero tie, paintings made for friends in Australia (Sue, John, Kerrie), numbers painting), 1991-1992; Words - Slogans (various t-shirts) - “they talk about the death of art...help! someone is trying to kill me”, “my sweet little lamb”, “work is a disease - Karl Marx”; Various artist books, catalogues, monographs, videos; Poster from exhibition Insulting Anarchy; "Circular" Croatian - Australian edition; Artist book by Vlado Martek (Dostoyevsky); more.
Thanks to Mladen Stilinović and Branka Stipančić.
Jonathan Walker
Always Will Need To Wear Winter Shirt Blue + Ochre Small Check Pattern
21 August - 21 September, 2015
Untitled
I am not a great reader of poetry but I always return to the work of Melbourne poet, Vincent Buckley (1925- 1988). Perhaps I find his most tantalising piece to be not a finished poem but a fragment left on a scrap of paper discovered on his desk after the poet’s death.
The poetry gathers like oil
In the word-core, and spreads
It has its music meet,
Its music is in movement.
This fragment is more the shell left behind from a volatile thought than a finished poem. I find the last two lines honest but awkward whereas the first two lines work like an arrow. Most likely he could not find a resolution so it was left. Still, in its present form, it remains an eloquent testimony to the ultimate failure of a medium to express mobile thought and sensation, in Buckley’s case, through verbal language. It’s an important matter because this is something all artists have to deal with regardless of the medium.
I have never written a poem, however, I am forever copying fragments from books on paper scraps in a vain effort to fix certain notions in my head. At first, they function as bookmarks that are sometimes returned to when I open the book. But before long, as they accumulate, they fall out littering the table interspersed with A4 photocopies, bills, books and medications.
To return to Buckley’s fragment, the first two lines very much evoke how I paint nowadays. As you age, detail diminishes and patches of light become more luminous and float. I feel the most honest way of dealing with this is by smearing the oil paint on the canvas with the fingers and working close-up, blind. Only if the patches coalesce into an approaching image can the work gain a life.
-
Jonathan Walker was born in Melbourne, Australia and brought up on a dairy farm in Gippsland. In the 1970’s he studied painting at RMIT and won the Harold Wright Scholarship to the British Museum, London. During the 1980’s he exhibited at Pinacotheca Gallery, Richmond and had work shown at the NGV and Heidi City Art Gallery. Over the same period he designed the cover for the “Epigenesi” LP by Giancarlo Toniutti, Italy and conducted a mail exchange work with Achim Wollscheid, Germany. The work with artists through the post resulted in an article published in the bicentenary issue of Art and Australia 1988. He showed in artist run spaces such as WestSpace in the 90’s and 2000’s, and until 2012, taught painting at Victoria University, which is where we (Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford) as organisers of the exhibition, among many others, had the privilege of being his student.
Walker’s knowledge was imparted to students through the careful selection of music, literature, and artists found in books that he himself had ordered for the library. Walker’s strategy was the generosity of sharing his vast knowledge with references specific to each student and their context.
Walker’s paintings share a similar focus and intimacy.
This exhibition presents a small selection of recent paintings alongside a publication that includes Walker’s writing. Observational and analytical, Walker’s work is a type of material notation — the time of day, colour and how it is blended, the both specific and fleeting location of a reflection on lino or the question of whether a chair leg should be included in a painting.
Please join us on Friday August 21 between 6-8pm to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.
Curated by Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford.
B. Wurtz
Curated by Nic Tammens
March 26 - April 4, 2015
B.Wurtz works from a basement studio in his home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
This local fact is attested to by the plastic shopping bags and newsprint circulars that appear in his work. As formal objects, they don’t make loud claims about their origins but nonetheless transmit street addresses and places of business from the bottom of this long thin island. Like plenty of artists, Wurtz is affected by what is local and what is consumed. His work is underpinned by this ethic. It often speaks from a neighborhood or reads like the contents of a hamper:
“BLACK PLUMS $1.29 lb.”
“Food Bazaar”
“USDA Whole Pork Shoulder Picnic 99c lb.”
“RITE AID Pharmacy, with us it’s personal.”
“H. Brickman & Sons.”
“Sweet Yams 59c lb."
Most of the work in this exhibition was made while the artist was in residence at Dieu Donne, a workshop dedicated to paper craft in Midtown. Here Wurtz fabricated assemblages with paper and objects that are relatively lightweight, with the intention that they would be easily transportable to Australia. This consideration isn’t absolute in Wurtz’s work, but was prescriptive for making the current exhibition light and cheap. Packed in two boxes, these works were sent from a USPS post office on the Lower East Side and delivered to North Melbourne by Australia Post.
Wurtz appears courtesy of Metro Pictures, New York.
Thanks to Rob Halverson, Joshua Petherick, Sari de Mallory, Matt Hinkley, Helen Johnson, Fayen d'Evie, Ask Kilmartin, Lisa Radon, Ellena Savage, Yale Union, and "Elizabeth".
John Nixon
"Archive"
December 15 - January 20, 2014
The presentation of John Nixon's archive offered a rare showcase of this extensive collection of the artist's own publications, catalogues, posters, ephemera, editions and more, from the mid 1980s onwards, alongside a selection of his artworks.
Organized by John Nixon, Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley.
"Habitat"
at Minerva, Sydney (organised by Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley)
November 15 - December 20, 2014
Lupo Borgonovo, Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley,
Lewis Fidock, HR Giger, Piero Gilardi, Veit Laurent Kurz,
Cinzia Ruggeri, Michael E. Smith, Lucie Stahl, Daniel Weil, Wols
Press Release:
“...It contained seven objects. The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuitboards, faced with mazes of gold. A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A fingerlength segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, grayish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin - but the thing’s face was seared and blackened.”
William Gibson, “Count Zero”, 1986
"Autumn Projects Archive"
Curated by Liza Vasiliou
March 6 - March 15, 2014
World Food Books, in conjunction with the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival 2014, presented the Autumn Projects archive, consisting of a selection of early examples in Australian fashion with a particular interest in collecting designers and labels from the period beginning in the 1980’s, who significantly influenced the discourse of Australian Fashion.
Curated by Liza Vasiliou, the exhibition provided a unique opportunity to view pieces by designers Anthea Crawford, Barbara Vandenberg, Geoff Liddell and labels CR Australia, Covers, Jag along with early experimental collage pieces by Prue Acton and Sally Browne’s ‘Fragments’ collection, suspended throughout the functioning World Food Books shop in Melbourne.
H.B. Peace
presented by CENTRE FOR STYLE
November 14, 2013
"Hey Blinky, you say chic, I say same"
Anon 2013
H.B. Peace is a clothing collaboration between great friends Blake Barns and Hugh Egan Westland. Their pieces explore the divergences between 'character’ and ‘personality’ in garments....etc
Special Thanks to Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley of WFB and Gillian Mears
and a Very Special Thank you to Audrey Thomas Hayes for her shoe collaboration.
Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley
"Aesthetic Suicide"
May 10 - June 8, 2013
The first of our occasional exhibitions in the World Food Books office/shop space in Melbourne, "Aesthetic Suicide" presented a body of new and older works together by artists Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, including videos, prints, a wall work, and publications.
During shop open hours videos played every hour, on the hour.
2015, English / German
Softcover, 104 pages, 21 x 30 cm
Published by
Camera Austria / Vienna
$30.00 $10.00 - In stock -
Camera Austria #131
Guest editor/cover artist Annette Kelm.
features the work of:
Annette Kelm, Shannon Ebner, Morgan Fisher, Jan Groover, Hans Hansen, Louis Ducos du Hauron, Judith Hopf, Horst P. Horst, Barbara Kasten, David Lieske, Dirk von Lowtzow, Maren Lübbke-Tidow, Henrik Olesen, Arthur Ou, Josephine Pryde, Sabine Reitmaier, Michael Schmidt, Hendrik Schwantes, Sylvia Sleigh, Lucie Stahl, Herbert Tobias, Christopher Williams and much more.
2018, English
Softback (2 vol. in slipcase), 96 pages, 20.5 x 20.5 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$56.00 - In stock -
Normative Models is two books in a slipcase comprised of an identical sequence of images and are only differentiated by the printed texts.
Catalogue 01/2018 contains, The Trial of Lucullus by Bertolt Brecht (English translation from 1943): and Catalogue 02/2018 includes, Applied Fantastic: On the Polish Women’s Magazine Ty I Ja by David Crowley.
These variants serve to demonstrate the complex symbiosis between image, context, and meaning.
Published on the occasion of the exhibition, Christopher Williams: Normative Modes at kestnergesellschaft, Hannover (5 May – 29 July 2018).
Williams, who is originally from Los Angeles, is currently professor of photography at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. The artist has presented a number of solo exhibitions under the title Christopher Williams. For Example: Dix-Huit Leçons Sur La Société Industrielle, versions of which have been shown in Germany at the Kunstverein Braunschweig (2005), the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden (2010), and the Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen (2011). Williams’s work was first presented in Hanover as part of group exhibitions at the Sprengel Museum in the early 1990s.
2010, English / Norwegian
Softcover, 80 pages, 20.3 x 25.4 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Bergen Kunsthall / Norway
$65.00 - Out of stock
For over 20 years Christopher Williams has worked in the field between photography as art and the application of the photographic medium to documentation, advertising, and journalism. The works involve volumes of such subtexts and themes, which are rarely fully apparent, but are concealed behind layer upon layer of circumstances and references, connotations, and background stories. Williams is a decided storyteller, and builds up his narratives by way of an almost essayistic juxtaposition of photographs that stand in relation – not directly obvious – with one another.
The exhibition in Bergen Kunsthall was the first solo presentation of Williams's work in Scandinavia and the title hints at a specific angle of approach to the complex network of connections. For Example: Dix-Huit Leçons Sur La Société Industrielle suggests a course of lessons that covers the industrial preconditions of the spread of photography, and which can in turn be applied to society in a larger perspective. The accumulation of loosely related events in European culture (decolonization, industrialization, the revolution of ‘68) is paralleled with inventions from the same era which have influenced photographic technology. The same title has been used for several exhibitions in recent years, but often with an addition that indicates that each new exhibition is a new experiment: a new revision. The way the titles begin with “For Example” also indicates the same experimental attitude.
The exhibition in Bergen Kunsthall was not a retrospective in the traditional sense, but brought out various aspects of the artistic oeuvre through a selection of both recent photographs and older works. The exhibition itself thus constituted a new revision of Williams’s ongoing project.
The exhibition catalogue collects, for the first time, a selection of Williams’s own writing in the form of press releases for recent exhibitions, each containing only minor changes from one exhibition to the next. The book also presents two new essays on the work of Christopher Williams by John Kelsey and Diedrich Diederichsen.
Designed by Christopher Williams and Petra Hollenbach.
In the 1970s, Christopher Williams studied at the California Institute of the Arts under the first wave of West Coast conceptual artists, including John Baldessari and Douglas Huebler, only to become one of his generation’s leading conceptualists. Williams’s work is a critical investigation of the medium of photography and more broadly the vicissitudes of industrial culture, in particular its structures of representation and classification. Using the process of reproduction as a point of entry, the artist manipulates the conventions of advertising, the superficiality of surface, and ultimately the history of Modernism. Deeply political, historical, and sometimes personal, the photographs are meant to evoke a subtle shift in our perception by questioning the communication mechanisms and aesthetic conventions that influence our understanding of reality.
Now out-of-print.
2006, English
Softcover, 240 pages, 23 x 14 cm
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$79.00 - Out of stock
Art After Conceptual Art tracks the various legacies of conceptualist practice over the past three decades. This collection of essays by art historians and artists from Europe and the Americas (including Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Helen Molesworth, Isabelle Graw, Thomas Crow, Helmut Draxler, Alexander Alberro, Sabeth Buchmann, Henrik Oelsen, Edit András) introduces and develops the idea that conceptual art generated several different, and even contradictory, forms of art practice. Some of these contested commonplace assumptions of what art is; others served to buttress those assumptions. The bulk of the volume features newly written and highly innovative essays challenging standard interpretations of the legacy of conceptualism and discussing the influence of conceptualism's varied practices on art since the 1970s. The essays explore topics as diverse as the interrelationships between conceptualism and institutional critique, neoexpressionist painting and conceptualist paradigms, conceptual art's often-ignored complicity with design and commodity culture, the specific forms of identity politics taken up by the reception of conceptual art, and conceptualism's North/South and East/West dynamics. A few texts that continue to be crucial for critical debates within the fields of conceptual and postconceptual art practice, history, and theory have been reprinted in order to convey the vibrant and ongoing discussion on the status of art after conceptual art. Taken together, the essays will inspire an exploration of the relationship between postconceptualist practices and the beginnings of contemporary art.
2015, English
Softcover, 256 pages, 17 x 24 cm
Published by
Valiz / Amsterdam
$50.00 - Out of stock
The Shape of Evidence examines the role and use of visual documents in contemporary art, looking at artworks in which the document is valued not only as a source of information but also as a distinctive visual and critical form. It contends that for artists who use film, photography or written sources, adopting formats derived from specific professional, industrial, scientific of or commercial contexts, the document offers a way to develop a critical reflection around issues of representation, knowledge production, art and its history.
It addresses several issues that are key both in art and in general culture today: the role of the museum and the archive, the role of documents and the trust that is placed in them, the circulation of such images and the historical genealogies that can be drawn in relation to images. Its uniqueness, however, also derives from its method: it is based on a close reading of a select number of works of art (e.g. Christopher Williams, Fiona Tan, Jean-Luc Moulène), which makes it approachable and engaging with the reader.
Moreover it applies an interdisciplinary perspective: while being about contemporary art it discusses objects and ideas drawn from a wide spectrum of areas including literature, history, photography history, scientific representation, surrealism, conceptual art, commercial photography and so forth.
The Shape of Evidence invites viewers to reflect upon the production and interpretation of seemingly straightforward images, and proposes that some artists can show us through their practice how to turn these deceptively simple images inside out.
Sophie Berrebi (1973) is a writer, art historian and occasional curator, born in Paris and living in Amsterdam. Her writing has appeared in frieze, Afterall, Metropolis M, and Art and Research, among other publications. She received her PhD from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, and has been based at the University of Amsterdam since 2003 where she teaches art history and theory, mainly in the areas of photography and contemporary art.
2014, English
Softcover, 372 pages (colour & b/w ill.), 27 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$160.00 - Out of stock
In the 1970s, Christopher Williams emerged as a key figure in the first wave of American West Coast conceptual artists, which included John Baldessari and Douglas Huebler.
Williams' work is a critical investigation of the medium of photography and more broadly the vicissitudes of industrial culture, in particular its structures of representation and classification. Using the process of reproduction as a point of entry, he manipulates the conventions of advertising, the superficiality of surface, and ultimately the history of Modernism.
This unique artist’s book is available in three editions, each with different ISBNs and different colour covers: red, yellow and green. It reproduces a carefully curated selection of the artist’s painstakingly constructed photographs and features striking graphic design in the near-complete absence of language, with no essay, captions, or even a title page. With the exception of differing cover photographs, the content of each edition is identical.
Published to coincide with Williams’ first major survey exhibition, The Production Line of Happiness at The Art Institute of Chicago, and then at The Museum of Modern Art, New York – both in 2014. The exhibition travels to Whitechapel Gallery, London in 2015.
YELLOW edition. All editions are out-of-print.
2018, English
Softcover, 304 pages, 19.4 x 27.9 cm
Published by
Koenig Books / London
$75.00 - Out of stock
Edited with text by Cathleen Chaffee. Text by Rachel Adams, Vera Alemani, Constance DeJong, Diedrich Diederichsen, Anthony Elms, David Grubbs, Henriette Huldisch, Branden W. Joseph, Andrew Lampert, Christopher Müller, Annie Ochmanek, Tony Oursler, Tina Rivers Ryan, Jay Sanders, Paige Sarlin, Christopher Williams.
Tony Conrad (1940-2016) was a pioneering American avant-garde video artist, experimental filmmaker, musician, composer, sound artist, teacher, and writer.
Throughout his six-decade career he forged a unique path through numerous artistic movements and defined a vast range of culture, including rock music and public access television.
In music, Conrad was an early member of the Theatre of Eternal Music (The Dream Syndicate), which included John Cale and La Monte Young. In the early 1960s he was also influential in the origins of the iconic band, The Velvet Underground. In film, Conrad was associated with the Structuralist movement which included filmmakers such as Paul Sharits and Hollis Frampton.
This richly illustrated catalogue offers an in-depth introduction to Conrad’s life and career: presenting his early Structuralist films projects in which he treated film as a sculptural and performative material; his Invented Acoustical Tools which presented as sculptures themselves; the ambitious films about power relations, set in the military and in prison; and his final sculptures and installations, which evoke and critique what he perceived as an emerging culture of surveillance, control, and containment.
This book also includes Conrad’s own writings writings from 1966 to 2016, as well as texts by curators, theorists and notable artists such as Tony Oursler, Christopher Müller, and Christopher Williams.
Accompanying the exhibition, Introducing Tony Conrad: A Retrospective at Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York (2018), MIT List Visual Arts Center and Carpenter Center for Visual Arts, Harvard University (2018/2019), and ICA, University of Pennsylvania (2019).
2009, English
Softcover, 438 pages, 14.8 x 21 cm
2nd Edition,
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$60.00 - Out of stock
2015 re-print of this fantastic and hugely popular book from 2009.
Essays by Bart De Baere, Céline Condorelli, Mark Cousins, Wouter Davidts, Jean-Claude Lebensztejn, Andrea Phillips, Jaime Stapleton, Jan Verwoert, Eyal Weizman & Rony Brauman
With works by Michael Asher, Artist Placement Group, Can Altay, Conrad Atkinson, Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin, Lonnie van Brummelen & Siebren de Haan, Banu Cennetoglu, Christopher D’Arcangelo, Martin Beck, Cevdet Erek, Andrea Fraser, Buckminster Fuller, Ryan Gander, Ella Gibbs, Frederick Kiesler, Lucy Kimbell, James Langdon, El Lissitzky, Peter Nadin, The offices of Peter Fend, Coleen Fitzgibbon, Jenny Holzer, Peter Nadin, Richard Prince & Robin Winters,” Gordon Matta-Clark, Antoni Muntadas, Lilly Reich, Support Structure, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Lawrence Weiner, Christopher Williams, Carey Young, a.o.
Support Structures is a manual for what bears, sustains, and props, for those things that encourage, care for, and assist; for that which advocates, articulates; for what stands behind, frames, and maintains: it is a manual for those things that give support. While the work of supporting might traditionally appear as subsequent, unessential, and lacking value in itself, this manual is an attempt to restore attention to one of the neglected, yet crucial modes through which we apprehend and shape the world.
Support Structures is a critical enquiry into what constitutes “support,” and documents the collaborative project “Support Structure” by Céline Condorelli and Gavin Wade. While registering and collecting reference projects in a new archive of support structures alongside its ten-phase project, different writers, thinkers, and practitioners were invited from various fields to elaborate on frameworks and work on texts , which form the theoretical backbone of the publication. The collection of contributions offers different possibilities for engaging in this unchartered territory, from propositions to projects, existing systems to ones invented for specific creative processes.
Support Structures offers support through potential methodologies, inspirations and activations for practice, and addresses important questions for art and architecture practices on forms of display, organization, articulation, appropriation, autonomy, and temporariness, and the manifestations of blindness towards them.
Produced in co-production with Support Structure:
Celine Condorelli and Gavin Wade with James Langdon
www.supportstructures.org
Design by James Langdon
2018, English / German
Softcover, 176 pages, 21.5 x 27 cm
Published by
Mumok / Vienna
Walther König / Köln
$49.00 - Out of stock
Gaby and Wilhelm Schürmann do not see their collection as just private property or a prestige object, but rather as an item of cultural value that needs exchange with the public. Their collection has been constantly growing since the late 1970s, and it provides an incomparable view of the development of contemporary art from the 1980s onward. This is a progressive statement on behalf of contemporary art that is anchored in social issues and sees itself as a form of communication. The rationale behind the collection, which is held in Herzogenrath near Aachen and in Berlin, is both creative and productive, and the two collectors’ practice can be described as a particularly free-spirited form of cultural production. The act of collecting is realized less in the processes of keeping and completing artworks and is instead understood mainly as an invitation to participate in the public production of connections. This very pragmatic and hands-on approach is manifested in sensual and unconventional gestures of presenting, including the principle of “comparative seeing.” In this sense, the Class Reunion exhibition, the title of which refers to a 2008 installation of the same name by Berlin artist Nairy Baghramian, will unravel an exciting, humorous, and surprising dialogue between the diverse artistic positions in the collection, establishing unexpected points of contact. One focus in this is on Viennese influences on this international collection and its networks.
This book has been published to document the collection on the occasion of an exhibition curated by Wilhelm Schürmann at Mumok, Vienna, June 23, 2018 - November 11, 2018.
Edited by Karola Kraus and illustrated throughout in colour, with accompanying texts and full collection catalogue.
Participating artists:
Nairy Baghramian, Silvia Bächli, Monika Baer, John Baldessari/Meg Cranston, Francesco Barocco, Jennifer Bornstein, Nicola Brunnhuber, Ernst Caramelle, Kate Davis, Heinrich Dunst, Marina Faust, Morgan Fisher, Jef Geys, Ralph Gibson, Julian Göthe, Trixi Groiss, Gerhard Gronefeld, Julia Haller, Rachel Harrison, Lone Haugaard Madsen, Georg Herold, Nicolas Jasmin, Raimer Jochims, Mike Kelley, , Martin Kippenberger, Silke Otto Knapp, Alwin Lay, Brandon Lattu, Michael Light, Sonia Leimer, Anita Leisz, Jochen Lempert, Zoe Leonard, Chris Martin, Park McArthur, Paul McCarthy, Meuser, Lisette Model, Oswald Oberhuber, Albert Oehlen, Anna Oppermann, Anna Ostoya, Jens Preusse, Rebecca Quaytman, Susanne Paesler, Laurie Parsons, Stephen Prina, Deborah Remington, Lin May Saeed, Pentti Sammallahti, Stefan Sandner, Arlene Shechet, Sigune Siévi, Michael Simpson, Michael E. Smith, Lewis Stein, Jana Sterbark, Esther Stocker, Walter Swennen, Alice Tippit, Joëlle Tuerlinckx, Nora Turato, Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven, Miriam Visaczki, Franz West, Tristan Wilczek, Christopher Williams, Heimo Zobernig
2017, English
Softcover, 144 pages, 11.5 x 18 cm
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
A.P.E (Art Projects Era)
Kestner Gesellschaft / Hannover
$30.00 - Out of stock
Contributions by Paul Chan, Keren Cytter, Nicolás Gaugnini, Irena Haiduk, Madeline Hollander, Sarah Kürten, Jordan Lord with Carissa Rodriguez, Luzie Meyer, John Miller, Rachel Rose, Karin Schneider, Cally Spooner, Studio for Propositional Cinema, Lawrence Weiner, Christopher Williams
A compendium of essays, scripts, poems, and proposals by various artists, in relation to a Spectator: was compiled by Studio for Propositional Cinema for their eponymous exhibition at the Kestner Gesellschaft in Hannover. In the opening text, Studio for Propositional Cinema—an artist collective founded in Düsseldorf in 2013—sets the context for the book’s investigations into notions of the script, staging, and the conditions of the exhibition itself. Other contributions include Keren Cytter’s rules and declarations for engaging life; Irena Haiduk and John Miller’s ruminations on the nature of the image and of the cinematic, respectively; a series of missives to Kevin Spacey from Cally Spooner; and an “open letter” by Christopher Williams detailing the labor and material conditions that have furnished the walls on which his exhibitions have hung.
This book is part of an ensemble of structures related to the nature of presentation in the Kestner Gesellschaft exhibition. Visually connected in their ultra-gloss white surfaces, they are meant to be seen as intertwined sites for the display of objects, the reproduction of images, the staging of performances, and the transmission language through talks and conversations.
Copublished with Kestner Gesellschaft and A.P.E. (Art Projects Era)
Design by Ronnie Fueglister
2014, English
Softcover, 372 pages (colour & b/w ill.), 27 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$160.00 - Out of stock
In the 1970s, Christopher Williams emerged as a key figure in the first wave of American West Coast conceptual artists, which included John Baldessari and Douglas Huebler.
Williams' work is a critical investigation of the medium of photography and more broadly the vicissitudes of industrial culture, in particular its structures of representation and classification. Using the process of reproduction as a point of entry, he manipulates the conventions of advertising, the superficiality of surface, and ultimately the history of Modernism.
This unique artist’s book is available in three editions, each with different ISBNs and different colour covers: red, yellow and green. It reproduces a carefully curated selection of the artist’s painstakingly constructed photographs and features striking graphic design in the near-complete absence of language, with no essay, captions, or even a title page. With the exception of differing cover photographs, the content of each edition is identical.
Published to coincide with Williams’ first major survey exhibition, The Production Line of Happiness at The Art Institute of Chicago, and then at The Museum of Modern Art, New York – both in 2014. The exhibition travels to Whitechapel Gallery, London in 2015.
RED edition.
Now out-of-print.
2017, English / Italian
Softcover, 440 pages, 18.5 x 26.5 cm
Published by
Mousse Publishing / Milan
$18.00 - Out of stock
10-year anniversary special issue: a selection of essays, interviews, conversations, and projects appeared in the first ten years of Mousse.
Featuring: Chantal Akerman, Cecilia Alemani, Jennifer Allen, Kai Althoff, Bruce Altshuler, Ed Atkins, Lutz Bacher, Darren Bader, Alex Bag, John Baldessari, Phyllida Barlow, Kirsty Bell, Andrew Berardini, Jonathan Berger, Michael Bracewell, Tom Burr, Maurizio Cattelan, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Stuart Comer, Lauren Cornell, Nicholas Cullinan, Roberto Cuoghi, Nick Currie, Massimo De Carlo, Gino De Dominicis, Gigiotto Del Vecchio, Simon Denny, Brian Dillon, Jimmie Durham, Dominic Eichler, Peter Eleey, Matias Faldbakken, Luigi Fassi, Elena Filipovic, Morgan Fisher, Isa Genzken, Yervant Gianikian & Angela Ricci Lucchi, Liam Gillick, Massimiliano Gioni, Isabelle Graw, Ed Halter, Jens Hoffmann, Judith Hopf, William E. Jones, Omar Kholeif, Alexander Kluge, Jiří Kovanda, William Leavitt, Elisabeth Lebovici, Andrea Lissoni, Helen Marten, Chus Martínez, Nick Mauss, Lucy McKenzie, Fionn Meade, Simone Menegoi, John Menick, Ute Meta Bauer, Massimo Minini, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Trevor Paglen, Stefania Palumbo, Francesco Pedraglio, Otto Piene, Laura Poitras, Elizabeth Price, Seth Price, Laure Prouvost, Alessandro Rabottini, Carol Rama, Filipa Ramos, Jason Rhoades, Dieter Roelstraete, Esperanza Rosales, Nicolaus Schafhausen, Fender Schrade, Stuart Sherman, Frances Stark, Jamie Stevens, Hito Steyerl, Sturtevant, Sabrina Tarasoff, Ana Teixeira Pinto, Oscar Tuazon, Giorgio Verzotti, Jan Verwoert, Francesco Vezzoli, Adrián Villar Rojas, Peter Wächtler, Ian Wallace, Klaus Weber, Cathy Wilkes, Christopher Williams, Jordan Wolfson.
Mousse is a bimonthly magazine published in Italian and English. Established in 2006, Mousse contains interviews, conversations, and essays by some of the most important figures in international criticism, visual arts, and curating today, alternated with a series of distinctive articles in a unique tabloid format. Mousse keeps tabs on international trends in contemporary culture thanks to its city editors in major art capitals such as Berlin, New York, London, Paris, and Los Angeles.
Mousse (Mousse Publishing) is also publisher of catalogues, essays and curatorial projects, artist books and editions.
2016, English
Softcover (over-sized), 136 pages, 25 x 37 cm
$58.00 $15.00 - Out of stock
encens is a fashion magazine from France, presenting a very selective number of designers, edited by Samuel Drira and Sybille Walter.
encens 36 "Mindscape" (Spring/Summer 2016) features Susan Sontag, Serge Lutens, Isabelle Weingarten, Cartier, Comme des Garçons, Annie Leibovitz, Nehera, Giorgio Armani, Hed Mayner, Angelo Flaccavento, James Benning, Carol Bove, Uma Wang, Veronique Branquinho, Issey Miyake, Carlo Scarpa, Lene Berg, Lutz Huelle, Givenchy, Dries Van Noten, Sonia Rykiel, Azzadine Alaia, Yohji Yamamoto, Willie Christie, Axl Jensen, Chanel, Celine, Lemaire, Veronique Leroy, Dior Homme, Maison Martin Margiela, Vivienne Westwood, Linda Loppa, Bless, Juun J., Christopher Williams, Friedrich Kiesler, Pierre Cardin, Hermes, and many more.
2016, English
Softcover (spiral-bound w. flexidisc), 208 pages, 20 x 31 cm
Published by
Walker Art Centre / Minneapolis
$85.00 $45.00 - Out of stock
Despite its apparent throwaway status, the stock image comprises the primary commodity of a billion-dollar global industry with far-reaching effects in the marketplace and the public sphere. Taking this overlooked facet of contemporary life as a point of departure, "Ordinary Pictures" explores the photographic apparatuses and commercial interests that have given rise to our generic image culture through the conceptual image-based work of some 40 artists, including John Baldessari, Steven Baldi, Sarah Charlesworth, Anne Collier, Liz Deschenes, John Divola, Aleksandra Domanovi c, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Morgan Fisher, Hollis Frampton, Jack Goldstein, Rachel Harrison, Robert Heinecken, Leslie Hewitt, Elad Lassry, Louise Lawler, Sherrie Levine, Steve McQueen, Jack Pierson, Peter Piller, Seth Price, Amanda Rossotto, Ed Ruscha, Steven Shore, Sturtevant, Mungo Thomson, Wolfgang Tillmans, Tseng Kwong Chi, Julia Wachtel and Christopher Williams. Spanning generations, movements and artistic strategies from the 1960s to the present day, this publication brings together works by artists who have probed, mimicked and critiqued this aspect of our visual environment as well as its industrial modes of production and distribution. Through the work of these artists and a series of scholarly essays, the catalogue aims to examine different operations of the generic image in culture, namely its anonymous circulation and editorial uses, its adaptability and reproducibility, its technical processes of production, its claim to copyright and artistic license and its tendency toward abstraction. Featuring a unique, coil-bound design reminiscent of stock photo catalogues and a flexidisc recording by the artist Jack Goldstein, this highly collectible book ultimately reflects on contemporary art's own complicit function as an expanding industrial image economy.
Edited by Eric Crosby, texts by Lane Relyea and Thomas Beard.
2015, English / Portuguese
Softcover (die-cut), 300 pages, 28.5 x 22.5 cm
Published by
Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art / Porto
$58.00 $30.00 - Out of stock
Since the second half of the 20th century, we have lived under the shadow of two clouds: the mushroom cloud of the atomic bomb, and the ‘cloud’ of distributed information networks. How did the central metaphor of cold war paranoia become the utopian metaphor of today? ‘Under the Clouds’ explores the contemporary sublime that has replaced the natural one, and the interrelated effects and affects of these two clouds on life and work, leisure and love, and on images, bodies, and minds.
The post-war technologies of the emergent third industrial revolution have now evolved to fit in the palm of our hand; we no longer merely look at images, we now touch, scroll, pinch, and drag them. Where is the border between the self and its data shadow, between information, matter, and affect? The biological, economic, aesthetic, and political effects of living under the clouds has taken the form of new relations between data and material, as well as increasing debt and abstract financialization; the changing nature of work and sex; and new relationships between screens, images, and things. As earlier forms of technologically inflected art sought to mitigate the effects of change — both on perception and society — many of today’s artistic practices confront the myriad interfaces and decentralized networks that continue to shape and transform daily life, forming new evolving connections between bits and atoms.
Texts by
Enrico Baj & Sergio Dangelo, Thomas Hirschhorn, Sean Landers, Metahaven, Seth Price, João Ribas, Frances Stark, Hito Steyerl, Stan VanDerBeek
Artists
Adel Abdessemed, Horst Ademeit, Cory Arcangel, Arte Nucleare, Darren Bader, Enrico Baj, Robert Barry, Eduardo Batarda, Thomas Bayrle, Neïl Beloufa, René Bertholo, Joseph Beuys, K.P. Brehmer, Bruce Conner, Kate Cooper, Gregory Corso, Guy Debord, Harun Farocki, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Carla Filipe, General Idea, Melanie Gilligan, Jean-Luc Godard & Anne-Marie Miéville, Peter Halley, Rachel Harrison, Mona Hatoum, Pedro Henriques, Thomas Hirschhorn, Yves Klein, Sean Landers, Elad Lassry, Mark Lombardi, Julie Mehretu, Katja Novitskova, Ken Okiishi, Trevor Paglen, Nam June Paik, Silvestre Pestana, Pratchaya Phinthong, Seth Price, Martha Rosler, Thomas Ruff, Jacolby Satterwhite, Ângelo de Sousa, Frances Stark, Haim Steinbach, Hito Steyerl, Jean Tinguely, Adelhyd van Bender, Stan VanDerBeek, Andy Warhol, Christopher Williams, Christopher Wool, Anicka Yi
2014, English
Softcover, 372 pages (colour & b/w ill.), 27 x 21 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$100.00 - Out of stock
In the 1970s, Christopher Williams emerged as a key figure in the first wave of American West Coast conceptual artists, which included John Baldessari and Douglas Huebler.
Williams' work is a critical investigation of the medium of photography and more broadly the vicissitudes of industrial culture, in particular its structures of representation and classification. Using the process of reproduction as a point of entry, he manipulates the conventions of advertising, the superficiality of surface, and ultimately the history of Modernism.
This unique artist’s book is available in three editions, each with different ISBNs and different colour covers: red, yellow and green. It reproduces a carefully curated selection of the artist’s painstakingly constructed photographs and features striking graphic design in the near-complete absence of language, with no essay, captions, or even a title page. With the exception of differing cover photographs, the content of each edition is identical.
Published to coincide with Williams’ first major survey exhibition, The Production Line of Happiness at The Art Institute of Chicago, and then at The Museum of Modern Art, New York – both in 2014. The exhibition travels to Whitechapel Gallery, London in 2015.
GREEN edition.
Due to the weight of this volume, your order will likely incur additional postage costs. We will contact you with the best shipping advice upon your order, or alternatively, please email us in advance. Thank you for understanding.
2012, English
Softcover, 156 pages, 25 x 17 cm
Published by
Fillip / Vancouver
$22.00 - Out of stock
Fillip issue no.17 – Fall 2012: with contributions by: Kristina Lee Podesva, Jeff Khonsary, Caren Kaplan, Maria Muhle, James Langdon, David Geers, Miwon Kwon, Helen Molesworth, Walid Sadek, David Hartt...
2012, English
Softcover, 544 pages (225 colour ill.), 18 x 23 cm
Published by
Yale University Press / New Haven
$55.00 - Out of stock
Helen Molesworth; With essays by Johanna Burton, William Horrigan, Elisabeth Lebovici, Kobena Mercer, Sarah Schulman, and Frazer Ward.
Art of the 1980s oscillated between radical and conservative, capricious and political, socially engaged and art historically aware. Published in association with the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, this fascinating book chronicles canonical as well as nearly forgotten works of the 1980s, arguing that what has often been dismissed as cynical or ironic should be viewed as a struggle on the part of artists to articulate their needs and desires in an increasingly commodified world. The major developments of the decade—the rise of the commercial art market, the politicization of the AIDS crisis, the increased visibility of women and gay artists and artists of color, and the ascension of new media—are illuminated in works by Sophie Calle, Nan Goldin, Jeff Koons, Lorna Simpson, Leigh Bowery, Jimmy De Sana, Carroll Dunham, Jimmie Durham, Alex Garry, Robert Gober, Nan Goldin, Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy, Annette Messager, Cady Noland, Albert Oehlen, Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman, Julian Schnabel, Rosemarie Trockel, Jeff Wall, Charlie Ahearn, Gretchen Bender, Black Audio Film Collective, Jennifer Bolande, Gregg Bordowitz, Eugenio Dittborn, Gran Fury, Group Material, Guerrilla Girls, Hans Haacke, David Hammons, Jenny Holzer, Alfredo Jaar, Barbara Kruger, Louise Lawler, Donald Moffett, Lorraine O’Grady, Paper Tiger Television, Adrian Piper, Lari Pittman, Tim Rollins and K.O.S., Christy Rupp, Doris Salcedo, Juan Sánchez, Tseng Kwong Chi and Keith Haring, Carrie Mae Weems, Christopher Williams, Krzystof Wodiczko, Judith Barry, Ashley Bickerton, Deborah Bright, Marlene Dumas, Felix Gonzales-Torres, Peter Hujar, G. B. Jones, Isaac Julian, Rotimi Fani Kayode, Mary Kelly, Silvia Kolbowski, Louise Lawler, Sherrie Levine, Jack Leirner, Robert Mapplethorpe, Richard Prince, Marlon Riggs, David Robbins, Laurie Simmons, Haim Steinbach, David Wojnarowicz, Dotty Attie, Robert Colescott, General Idea, Robert Gober, Jack Goldstein, Pater Halley, Mary Heilmann, Candy Jernigan, Mike Kelley, Martin Kippenberger, Louise Lawler, Sherrie Levine, Christian Marclay, Allan McCollum, Peter Nagy, Raymond Pettibon, Stephen Prina, Martin Puryear, Gerhard Richter, David Salle, Doug + Mike Starn, Tony Tasset, James Welling, and Christopher Wool, among others. Essays by leading scholars provide unique perspectives on the decade's competing factions and seemingly contradictory elements, from counterculture to the mainstream, radicalism to democracy and historical awareness, conservatism to feminist politics.
Complete with critical texts on each work, This Will Have Been brings into focus the full impact of the art, artists, and political and cultural ruptures of this paradigm-shifting decade. More than 200 full-color reproductions of works in a range of media, including drawing, painting, photography, and sculpture, illustrate this ambitious guide to a period of artistic transformation.
2010, English
Softcover, 12 x 19 cm, 248 pages (26 b/w ill.)
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$25.00 - Out of stock
Edited by Daniel Birnbaum, Isabelle Graw, Institut für Kunstkritik, Frankfurt am Main Compiled for the first time here, the critic, artist, gallerist, dealer, translator John Kelsey’s selected essays gamesomely convey some of the most poignant challenges in the art world and in the many social roles it creates. “When the critic chooses to become a smuggler, a hack, a cook, or an artist,” Kelsey said at a 2007 conference at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main, “it’s maybe because criticism as such remains tied to an outmoded social relation.” It is precisely this relation that Kelsey intends to not only critique but also to surpass. In this way, Kelsey’s “Rich Texts” play the double role of explaining the art world and actively participating in it; they close the distance between the work of art and how we talk about it. “With a keen sense of the way objects and subjects appear in the spaces we share, and how we inhabit our bodies, John Kelsey writes texts at once playful and true to the situations under observation. He does not write from an imaginary critical distance, but as someone fully aware of being immersed in the commercial world, commodified and for hire—i.e., as a ‘hack’—yet constantly searching for new forms of experimentation.” —Daniel Birnbaum and Isabelle Graw Originally published in Artforum—where Kelsey is a contributing editor—Texte zur Kunst, Parkett, and various artists’ catalogues, the essays compiled in Rich Texts have all been written over the last decade, and therefore embody a timeliness that strikes at the core of the contemporary art world and the crises that have come to define it. Design by Surface, Frankfurt am Main/Berlin
2011, English
Softcover, 126 pages (40 colour ill.), 27 x 21.7 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$38.00 - Out of stock
Exhibition catalogue published in conjunction with show held at Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Germany, June 12 - August 29, 2010. Foreword by Karola Kraus. Text by Mark Godfrey. "Christopher Williams began his career in the late 1980s appropriating advertising imagery; more recently he has begun to mimic such imagery himself, or at least adapt its capacity for pristine presentation and technical precision. Williams' prints of industrial products, animals, plants, modernist architecture and people pull the rug from under commercial photography with the lightest of tugs." -- publisher's statement.
2007, English/German
Foldout poster, 600 x 420 mm, (150 x 210 mm folded)
Published by
Kunsthalle Zürich / Zürich
$15.00 - Out of stock
Poster/invitation from Christopher William's 2007 exhibition at the Kunsthalle Zurich
Introductory text in English and German on reverse side.
2011, English/French
Softcover, 174 pages (b&w ill.), 240 x 175 mm
Published by
May Revue / Paris
$18.00 - In stock -
In this issue:
“I think it’s time to break off…’’
Olivier Zahm
Preface (Documents sur l’art, no 2, 1993)
Hervé Legros
Interview between Olivier Zahm (of Purple) and May
Wishing to be in Paris, glad to be in Berlin or different ways to escape the 1990s
Stephan Geene
Investigation of a Party: An Interview with Roberto Ohrt
Catherine Chevalier
Looking the part—The Empty Plan by Anja Kirschner and David Panos
Maija Timonen
Gerard Byrne, “In San Francisco they say, “Flash on it””
Clara Schulmann
Ken Okiishi, (Goodbye to) Manhattan
Karl Holmqvist
Richard Prince, American Prayer
François Aubart
Emily Sundblad, “Que Barbaro”
Rob McKenzie
Henrik Olesen, The Maculate Conception
Elisabeth Lebovici
Rirkrit Tiravanija, Lung Neaws Visits His Neighbours
Karl Holmqvist
Kœnraad Dedobbeleer, The Duplication of Dedobbeleer
Vincent Romagny
Christopher d’Archangelo, Contrary to Intuition, Let’s Begin with an Image
Scott Portnoy
2003, English/German
Both softcover, 255 (vol.I) and 180 pages w. 45 colour ill. (vol. II), both 13 x 21 cm
Rare / Out-of-Print,
Published by
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$60.00 - Out of stock
Set of both long out-of-print volumes!
VOL. I
Edited by Michael Hirsch, Vanessa Joan Müller, Nicolaus Schafhausen
Texts by Norbert Bolz, Peter Bürger, Alex Demirovic, Diedrich Diederichsen, Alexander García Düttmann, Michael Hirsch, Christoph Menke, Willem van Reijen, Martin Seel
The first volume of Adorno. The Possibility of the Impossible comprises theoretical essays which investigate the relevance of Adorno’s critical theory for the present. The tight connection between individual observations in aesthetics and cultural criticism, on the one hand, and the large speculations of social theory and the history of philosophy, on the other, that is found in Adorno’s own work is taken as a point of departure in many passages. The difference – disparity, even – in the varied attitudes toward the content of Adorno’s theory is evident. Seen from the perspective of the present, this multiple rereading is directed at fragments of a thought that has preserved its radicality even when abstracted from its immediate historical context. Both publications – Adorno. The Impossibility of the Impossible Vol. I and Vol. II – accompany an exhibition at the Frankfurter Kunstverein on the occasion of the 100th birthday of Theodor W. Adorno.
Design by Surface, Berlin/Frankfurt am Main
VOL. II
Edited by Michael Hirsch, Vanessa Joan Müller, Nicolaus Schafhausen
Texts by Isabelle Graw and Georg Schöllhammer
Volume II documents the exhibition which looks at the connection between contemporary art and Adorno’s writings, with the visual arts becoming a central platform for comparison to Adorno’s main subjects. The publication illustrates the works exhibited and discusses the relationship between autonomy and sovereignty. Artists included are Carl Andre, Samuel Beckett, Martin Boyce, André Cadere, Martin Creed, Thomas Demand, Jason Dodge, Maria Eichhorn, Peter Friedl, Isa Genzken, Liam Gillick, Henrik Plenge Jacobsen, Euan McDonald, John Massey, Jonathan Monk, Sarah Morris, Bruce Nauman, Mathias Poledna, Stephen Prina, Florian Pumhösl, Ad Reinhardt, Gerhard Richter, Markus Schinwald, Andreas Slominski, Lawrence Weiner, Christopher Williams, Cerith Wyn Evans.
Design by Surface, Berlin/Frankfurt am Main
2011, English/German
Softcover, periodical, 280 pages (colour/b&w ill.), 230 x 165 mm
Published by
Texte Zur Kunst / Berlin
$32.00 - In stock -
"The Collectors" issue
includes: