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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World Food Books Gift Voucher
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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.
2020, English / Japanese
Softcover (w. dust-jacket, poster, stickers), 108 pages, 26.5 x 36.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
PARCO / Tokyo
Kaleidoscope Press / Milan
$200.00 - Out of stock
First edition, now out-of-print.
With a first edition sold out in Japan in one week, this super book published by Italian art publisher KALEIDOSCOPE accompanies a two-artist exhibition co-curated by Alessio Ascari and Shinji Nanzuka, bringing together for the very first time the work of Japanese artist Hajime Sorayama and Swiss artist HR Giger. Touring from PARCO Museum in Tokyo to PARCO Event Hall in Osaka between December 2020 and February 2021, the exhibition coincides with the 80th anniversary of Giger’s birth and features over 50 works ranging from the late 1960s to the present day.
The catalogue, designed by Swiss-based art direction firm Kasper-Florio with Samuel Bänziger, features a foreword by co-curator Alessio Ascari, a critical essay by Venus Lau, an interview with the late HR Giger by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Patrick Frey, and a recent interview with Sorayama by Ascari.
Lavishly illustrated throughout, this beautiful edition also comes with a 50 x 70 cm two-sided poster, and two 20 cm die-cut stickers.
Born and trained at opposite ends of the world, Sorayama and Giger are apparently at odds—one’s bright colors are swallowed by the other’s dark chiaroscuro; one’s enthusiastic outlook on technology borders with the other’s nightmarish dystopia; one’s “super-realism” challenges the other’s surrealism—yet they share more than meets the eye. Both emerged in the 1970s and 1980s, becoming acknowledged masters of airbrush painting and influential creators beyond the boundaries of the traditional art world, blurring the relationship between commercial and personal work. But more importantly, at the very core of their practice lies a similar concern: an obsessive investigation of AI, eternal life, and the fusion of organic and apparatus. Gynoids (female androids) are predominant subjects, conjuring the post-human and the apotheosis of the woman to reveal an underlying tension between life, death, power and desire.
Hajime Sorayama (b. 1947 in Imabari, Ehime prefecture) has established his position as a legendary artist, both within Japan and internationally, for his extensive oeuvre that centers upon an ongoing pursuit for beauty in the human body and the machine. Best known for his precisely detailed, hand-painted portrayals of voluptuous women, obtained through an astoundingly artful use of a wide array of realistic expressional techniques, most prominently airbrush painting, the artist’s international recognition is inextricably tied to his signature series titled “Sexy Robot” (1978-) featuring erotic android figures clad in shiny chrome metal, and to AIBO, the award-winning robotic pet he designed for SONY in 1999.
Hans Ruedi Giger (1940–2014) was a Swiss surrealist painter, sculptor, and set designer known for his biomechanical creatures, extraterrestrial landscapes, and disturbing sexual machines. In a career that spanned more than five decades, he employed a staggering variety of media, including furniture, movie props, prints, paintings and sculptures, often creating exhibition displays and total environments with the immersive quality of a wunderkammer—including, most notably, the HR Giger Museum in Gruyères. In 1979, his concept design for Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) won an Academy Award for Best Achievement in Visual Effects and catapulted to fame his daunting vision of death and futurism.
2010, English
Softcover (w. plastic jacket), 82 pages, 30 x 21.4 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
White Cube / London
$185.00 $100.00 - In stock -
Handsome, now rare book on the work of artist Welsh conceptual artist, sculptor and film-maker Cerith Wyn Evans, published by White Cube in 2010 on the occasion of the solo exhibition ''Everyone's gone to the movies, now we're alone at last..." (13 April – 21 May 2010, White Cube, Mason's Yard), only to quickly disappear from the face of the planet.
Certainly one of the scarcest recent publications on the artist.
Taking its title from a song by Steely Dan, 'Everyone's Gone To The Movies' (1975), Wyn Evans created two major installations that transformed the White Cube gallery spaces, engaging the viewer through the interaction of light, sound and reflection.
Text by Hans-Ulrich Obrist, including an interview with the artist.
This copy is brand new.
2018, English
Hardcover, 850 pages, 28.2 x 34.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$450.00 $280.00 - Out of stock
First, only edition of the absolutely epic, award winning and now extremely rare 850 page Arthur Jafa book. Very quickly out-of-print.
Across three decades the American artist and cinematographer, Arthur Jafa (b. 1960, Tupelo, USA) has developed a dynamic, multidisciplinary practice ranging from films and installations to lecture-performances and happenings that tackle, challenge and question prevailing cultural assumptions about identity and race.
Jafa’s work is driven by a recurrent question: how might one identify and develop specifically Black visual aesthetics equal to the ‘power, beauty and alienation’ of Black music in American culture?
Building upon Jafa’s image-based practice, this enormous (over 840 pages) and now out-of-print volume comprises a series of visual sequences that are cut and juxtaposed across its pages. The artist has been collecting and working from a set of source books since the 1990s, seeking to trace and map unwritten histories and narratives relating to black life.
Punctuating this visual material is a series of commissioned texts partnered with a rich compendium of essays, short stories and poetry that has informed Jafa’s artistic practice and which together form an unprecedented resource.
Jafa's imagery is placed in conversation with texts by over 30 outstanding contributors including Hilton Als, Jean Baudrillard, Amiri Baraka, Judith Butler, Samuel R. Delany, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Fred Moten, Dave Hickey, John Akomfrah, Tina Campt, Hans Ulrich Obrist, and Cecil Taylor. Edited by Joseph Constable and Amira Gad.
Published after the exhibition, Arthur Jafa: A Series of Utterly Improbable, Yet Extraordinary Renditions at Serpentine Galleries, London (8 June – 10 September 2017), and at the Julia Stoschek Collection, Berlin (11 February – 25 November 2018).
Fine - In pristine new condition
2011, English
Softcover, 88 pages, 25.5 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Serpentine Gallery / London
Walther König / Köln
$90.00 $70.00 - In stock -
First edition of the fast out-of-print "SEE, WE ASSEMBLE" Mark Leckey catalogue.
In a multi-disciplinary practice that encompasses sculpture, sound, film and performance, Leckey explores the potential of the human imagination to appropriate and to animate a concept, an object or an environment.
Drawing on his personal experiences as a London-based artist, who spent his formative years in the north of England, Leckey returns frequently to the themes of desire and transformation.
Leckey’s fascination with the affective power of images is another recurring theme. Meticulously sourced and reconfigured archival footage is a predominant feature of some of his best-known works. Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore (1999) is a seminal exploration of the history of underground dance culture in the UK from the mid- 1970s to the early 1990s.
In the recent performance piece GreenScreenRefrigeratorAction (2010), Leckey sought to communicate the inner life of a ‘smart’ fridge – one that keeps an electronic tally of its contents – and to render audible its ‘voice’.
Included is an interview between the artist and Julia Peyton-Jones and Hans Ulrich Obrist, and an extract from a script by Mark Leckey and Martin McGeown.
Published on the occasion of the exhibition Mark Leckey: SEE, WE ASSEMBLE at Serpentine Gallery, London, May - June 2011.
As New.
2000, English
Softcover, 500 pages, 21.5 x 15.7 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Purple Institute / Paris
$260.00 - In stock -
A rare early issue of the iconic Purple magazine, edited by Elein Fleiss and Olivier Zahm, this wonderful early edition features: Susan Cianciolo, Raf Simons, Jack Goldstein, Terry Richardson, Anders Edstrom, Chloe Sevigny, Wolfgang Tillmans, Martin Margiela, Rosemarie Trockel, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, General Idea, Mark Borthwick, Lewis Baltz, Lars Bang Larsen, Wolfgang Tillmans, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Comme des Garçons, Michelle Grabner, Bless, Yohji Yamamoto, Dike Blair, Bernhard Willhelm, Gilles Deleuze, Karl Holmqvist, David Grubbs, Glenn O'Brian, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Bob Nickas, Sergio Guillen, Camille Vivier, Tan Lin, Olivier Zahm, Armin Linke, Amy Yao, Elein Fleiss, Henry Roy, Torbjorn Rodland, Chikashi Suzuki, Michael Smith, Lionel Bovier, Amy Sillman, Cerith Wyn Evans, Daniel Pflumm, Allen Rupperberg, Blake Rayne, Stephen Prina, Sture Johannesson, Franz Ackermann, Adrea Zittel, Jeremy Deller, Miu Miu, Dorothee Perret, Gaspard Yurkievich, Stanley Brouwn, Vija Celmins, Bas Jan Ader, Richard Prince, Tim Griffin, and so many more. One of the best issues!
In 1992, Elein Fleiss and Olivier Zahm started the magazine Purple Prose as a reaction against the superficial glamour of the 1980s; much as a part of the global counterculture at the time, inspired by magazines like Interview, Ray Gun, Nova, and Helmut Newton's Illustrated, but with the aesthetics of what usually is referred to as anti-fashion. Based on their personal interests and views; Purple was, and in a sense still is, made much in the same spirit of the fanzine. Started "without any means, and without any experience, because we wanted to make a magazine that was radically different. We wanted to support the artists around us that no one else supported, much less talked about."—Olivier Zahm. The magazine became associated with the "realism" of the new fashion photography of the 1990s, with names like Juergen Teller, Terry Richardson, Wolfgang Tillmans, Mark Borthwick, Corinne Day, and Mario Sorrenti. Soon after the birth of Purple Prose, Zahm and Fleiss created spin-off publications such as les cahiers purple, Purple Sexe, Purple Fiction, and of course, Purple Fashion, in which Zahm aimed at fusing together his two worlds, fashion and art. Now one of the most iconic and influential fashion magazines in history.
Very Good copy. Copy from the library of OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture)! OMA was founded in 1975 by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and Greek architect Elia Zenghelis, along with Madelon Vriesendorp and Zoe Zenghelis. Sticker to spine and sticker to front cover (re-movable, but let on due to noteworthiness)
2001, English
Softcover, 178 pages, 22 x 13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Independent Curators International (ICI) / New York
$45.00 $20.00 - In stock -
First 2001 edition, long out-of-print.
Edited by Carin Kuoni.
Essays by Jean-Christophe Ammann, Carlos Basualdo, René Block, Francesco Bonami, Dan Cameron, Lynne Cooke, Bice Curiger, Donna De Salvo, Richard Flood, Thelma Golden, Yuko Hasegawa, Jean-Hubert Martin, Gerardo Mosquera, Hans Ulrich Obrist.
A modern update of the Medieval trade manuals--the 'come-along-with-me' (vade mecum) of Medieval craftsmen--Words of Wisdom: A Curator's Vade Mecum is an invaluable guidebook for anyone interested in contemporary art and the practice of curating. In over fifty short essays, this compendium offers advice to a new generation of curators from veterans of contemporary art exhibitions who, over the past 25 years, have played a crucial role in shaping what we see today, and how we see it. While providing an intimate look at the minds of these master curators, Words of Wisdom also establishes the curator's craft as an important vocation that has changed tremendously over the past quarter-century. In the course of their musings, the curators offer behind-the-scenes insights into influential exhibitions and institutions and the contemporary art world they represent. Among the contributors are Jean-Christophe Amman, director of the Museum of Modern Art, Frankfurt, Germany; Donna de Salvo, curator at the Tate Gallery, London; Richard Flood, chief curator at the Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis; independent curator Hans Ulrich Obrist; and Marcia Tucker, founding director of the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York.
Very Good copy, light wear/tanning.
2014, English
Softcover, 246 pages, 15 x 21 cm
Published by
JRP Ringier / Zürich
$45.00 $35.00 - Out of stock
This publication is dedicated to pioneering curators and presents a unique collection of interviews by Hans Ulrich Obrist: Anne d'Harnoncourt, Werner Hofman, Jean Leering, Franz Meyer, Seth Siegelaub, Walter Zanini, Johannes Cladders, Lucy Lippard, Walter Hopps, Pontus Hultén, and Harald Szeemann are gathered together in this volume.
The contributions map the development of the curatorial field, from early independent curating in the 1960s and 1970s and the experimental institutional programs developed in Europe and in the USA at this time, through Documenta and the development of biennales.
The book is part of the Documents series, co-published with Les presses du réel and dedicated to critical writings.
2000, English
Softcover, 176 pages, 21 x 15 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
New Art Gallery / Walsall
$35.00 $20.00 - Out of stock
First 2000 edition, long out-of-print.
Curating in the 21st Century is a compilation of essays, lectures and discussions that considers various strands of thinking on curatorial practice and thus creates a practical resource for those involved in art production, representation, circulation, distribution, management, cultural critique and curatorial practice itself. The proposals, stories, problems, breakthroughs and sheer belief in the constructive application of curatorial art production for the future gives a sense of the amount and quality of work taking place at the moment. Within an international framework, Curating in the 21st Century focuses on a broad range of curatorial practices dealing with specific issues, ideas, concepts, ideals, histories, problematics, achievements, failures and speculations. Prominent and influential practitioners from as far afield as Bulgaria, New York, Rotterdam, Paris, Stockholm, London, Norwich, Liverpool, Birmingham, Wolverhampton and Walsall contribute to a holistic view of the international and local art world, offering critical views and informed speculation on the past, current and future needs of art, artists, curators and audiences.
Very Good copy.
1999, English / French / Japanese
Two-volume softcover bookset in curregated cardboard slip-case, 120 pages & 220 pages (colour and b&w ill. throughout), 18 x 25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
APT International / Tokyo
Isetan Museum of Art / Tokyo
$250.00 $160.00 - Out of stock
First Edition of this comprehensive, beautifully produced Japanese two-volume publication on the life and work of the great French avant-garde painter, poet and typographist, Francis Picabia.
Published by APT International in 1999 for a major Japanese travelling exhibition on Francis Picabia, starting at the Isetan Museum of Art in Tokyo in 1999, then to Fukushima and Osaka throughout 1999-2000.
Two Volumes bound in french-fold wraps, beautifully kept fine volumes, both housed in protective corrugated cardboard slip-case with scarlet label wrapped around spine. Slipcase itself is now protected under plastic sleeve.
First volume (226 page) forms a comprehensive retrospective of Picabia's life and prolific and defying work across painting, drawing, printing, poetry and film. Extensive colour and b&w reproductions of a vast collection of his painting, illustration and publishing projects are presented alongside a folio of his poems and drawings, plus photo documentation of his studio and private/social life. Also includes a biography and bibliography, as well as an insightful conversation between Olga Picabia (Francis Picabia's widow), Pierre Calté (director of Comité Picabia), Hans Ulrich Obrist (independent curator) and Stefan Banz (independent curator), about Picabia's life (text in English and Japanese). Introductory essays in Japanese and French by Beverley Calte and Arnauld Pierre.
Second volume (120 pages) "391" is a very special book made up of collated facsimiles of the 19 issues of Picabia's famous Dada periodical, "391", dating 1917-1924.
391 first appeared in January 1917 in Barcelona, published and edited by Picabia, assisted in assembling by Olga Sacharoff, a Georgian emigre residing in Barcelona. The title of the magazine derives from Alfred Stieglitz's New York periodical 291 (to which Picabia had contributed), and bore no relation to its contents. Despite Picabia's renown as an artist, it was mostly literary in content, with a wide-ranging aggressive tone, possibly influenced by Alfred Jarry and Apollinaire. There were contributions by two men new to Dada: Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp. However 391 remained essentially the expression of the inventive, energetic and wealthy Picabia, who stated of it: "Every page must explode, whether through seriousness, profundity, turbulence, nausea, the new, the eternal, annihilating nonsense, enthusiasm for principles, or the way it is printed. Art must be unaesthetic in the extreme, useless and impossible to justify."
Francis Picabia (22 January 1879 – 30 November 1953) was a French avant-garde painter, poet and typographist. After experimenting with Impressionism and pointillism, Picabia became associated with Cubism. His highly abstract planar compositions were colourful and rich in contrasts. He was one of the early major figures of the Dada movement in the United States and in France. His was later briefly associated with Surrealism, but would soon turn his back on the art establishment.
Very Good copy.
2022, English
Softcover, 142 pages, 24 x 33 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Tina Kim Gallery / New York
$200.00 - Out of stock
First edition, quickly out-of-print. Published to accompany an exhibition bringing together the worlds of the late Swiss visionary Hans Ruedi Giger (1940–2014) and South Korean artist Mire Lee, at The Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin, September 18, 2021–January 2, 2022, this book beckons towards the darkest aisles of the human body and psyche. Both artists deal in biomechanical phantasmagorias of human and machine forms combining in an indissoluble whole, a constant metamorphosis between the stages of decline and resilience, hopelessness and power, lust and revulsion, male and female – thus emblematic of the polarities of our own existence. With texts by Agnes Gryczkowska, Charlie Fox, and McKenzie Wark and conversations between the artists and Hans Ulrich Obrist.
2024, English / German
Hardcover, 315 pages, 30 x 30.2 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
König Galerie / Berlin
$95.00 - In stock -
A pioneering figure of 1980s neo-expressionism and an important inspiration for the Neue Wilde painters, K.H. Hödicke, who die in February 2024, was best known for his variegated depictions of Berlin, where people, landscapes, and architecture take on an almost folkloric quality. This lavish over-sized hardcover catalogue comprises is profusely illustrated with paintings and sculptures produced between the mid-1960s and the mid-1990s, including works in which Hödicke portrays West Berlin during the division of Germany. Foreword by Timon Karl Kaleyta, text by Andrew Hunt, and an Interview by Hans Ulrich Obrist. All text in English and German.
Karl Horst Hödicke (1938–2024) was a contemporary German artist known for his Neo-Expressionist paintings. The artist’s broad brushstrokes and specific colour palette provide his works with a sense of seeing a place through memory – specifically Berlin with its ever-changing cityscape was a central motif in his work. Having moved to Berlin in 1957, Hödicke became one of the spokespeople for a small group of impetuous young lateral thinkers who wanted to revolutionise painting. No sooner had German post-war modernism rejoined the international artistic trend towards the abstract than they revolted against this new doctrine with a revival of figurative painting, which had been declared obsolete. Hödicke was subsequently a pioneer of German Neo-Expressionism and New Figuration with Georg Baselitz, Jörg Immendorf, and A.R. Penck. He was one of the main protagonists and drivers of the New Savages or Junge Wilde movement in 1978, which arose in the German-speaking world in opposition to established minimal and conceptual strategies.
1992, English / German
Softcover, 200 pages, 25.5 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Parkett / Zürich
$80.00 - Out of stock
1992 issue of Parkett (Vol. 31), deluxe issue created in collaboration with artists David Hammons and Mike Kelley, lavishly illustrated with both artist's works alongside texts by with texts by Robert Farris Thompson, Iwona Blazwick & Emma Dexter, John Ffarris, Lynne Cooke, Louise Neri in conversation with David Hammons, Diedrich Diederichsen, Lane Relyea, Bernard Marcadé, Mike Kelley & Julie Sylvester talking about “Failure.” The Insert artist is Candida Höfer and the spine artist is Niele Toroni. Also in this issue: Vija Celmins by Sheena Wagstaff, Larry Clark, What is This? by Jim Lewis, Jean-Pierre Bordaz “Imi Knoebel, Isa Genzken, Gerhard Merz,” Claude Ritschard “Rémy Zaugg.” Imi Knoebel: Working With Success – Working With Unsucces by Rudolf Bumiller, Imi Knoebel and Grace Kelly, The High by Rainer Crone & David Moos, Imi Knoebel First Impressions by Lisa Liebmann, Sherrie Levine: The Transgressions of Sherrie Levine by Daniela Salvioni, Presence Withdrawn by Erich Franz, Looking After Sherrie Levine by Howard Singerman, Damien Hirst — Insert, Making Work and Turning Your Back on it : Bethan Huws by Liam Gillick, The Work of Art as the Ideal Center for Human Beings, Walter de Maria’s The 2000 Sculpture by Thomas Kellein, International Time Capsule Society, Les Infos du Paradis, Inside the White Cube, Cumulus from America by Ralph Rugoff, Cumulus from Europe by Robert Fleck, Talk o’ the Town by Jeanne Sliverthorn.
Founded in the early 1980s in Zurich, with an office also in New York City, Parkett was international art magazine that aimed to foster an open dialogue between the artistic communities of Europe and America, with the goal to actively and directly collaborate with important international artists whose oeuvre was explored in several essays by leading writers and critics in both German and English. By 2017, Parkett had published 100 volumes with some 180 monographs and over 1500 in-depth texts making it one of the most comprehensive libraries on contemporary art worldwide. Critics, curators, art historians, and other commentators join in the conversation contained within its pages. Many write on the collaborating artists; some write opinions under a variety of topic headings that recur issue to issue; others write on additional artists and ideas. The result is more of a curated event-between-covers than a typical art magazine with reviews and news items.
Average—Good copy with some marking and wear. Ex-sticker resudue to cover.
2020, English
Hardcover, 296 pages, 19.3 x 23.6 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Karma / New York
$350.00 - Out of stock
Long needed, and already out of print, this is the first full overview of American abstract sculptor Thad Mosley, published by KARMA, New York in a single edition of 1000 copies. Since 1959, the monumental, freestanding sculptures of Pittsburgh-based self-taught artist Thad Mosley (born 1926), crafted with reclaimed building materials and felled trees, have occupied the forefront of abstraction in American sculpture. This profusely illustrated cloth-bound, hardcover volume includes texts by Ingrid Schaffner, Sam Gilliam, Brett Littman, Jessica Bell Brown, Ed Roberson, Connie H. Choi, and an interview by Hans Ulrich Obrist.
Thaddeus Mosley (b. 1926) is a Pittsburgh-based self-taught artist whose monumental sculptures are crafted with the felled trees of Pittsburgh’s urban canopy, via the city’s Forestry Division; wood from local sawmills; and reclaimed building materials. Using only a mallet and chisel, he reworks salvaged timber into biomorphic forms. With influences ranging from Isamu Noguchi to Constantin Brâncuși—and the Bamum, Dogon, Baoulé, Senufo, Dan, and Mossi works of his personal collection—Mosley’s sculptures mark an inflection point in the history of American abstraction. These “sculptural improvisations,” as he calls them, take cues from the modernist traditions of jazz. “The only way you can really achieve something is if you’re not working so much from a pattern,” Mosley says of his improvisational method. “That’s also the essence of good jazz.” Mosley’s work has been exhibited and acquired by major museums and foundations since 1959, including the Mattress Factory Museum, Pittsburgh, and most recently, the Carnegie Museum of Art, for the occasion of the 57th Edition Carnegie International (2018).
As New.
2015, English
Hardcover (cloth-bound), 248 pages, 18 x 25 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Mousse Publishing / Milan
$400.00 - Out of stock
The great hardcover monographic book on the work of Giorgio Griffa, edited by Andrea Bellini, that very quickly disappeared from print and became understandibly collectible. This most comprehensive English-language book on the artist, published on the occasion of the cycle of exhibitions dedicated to the work of Giorgio Griffa (Turin, 1936) (Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva; Museu de Arte Contemporanea de Serralves, Porto; Bergen Kunsthall; and Fondazione Giuliani, Rome) aims—through a series of essays by Andrea Bellini, Luca Cerizza, Laura Cherubini, Martin Clark, Suzanne Cotter, and Chris Dercon, a conversation between Griffa and Hans Ulrich Obrist, and a selection of artist’s writings and a chronology compiled by Marianna Vecellio—to highlight the very diverse features and extraordinary richness of Griffa’s paintings. Profusely illustrated throughout.
“Giorgio Griffa is one of the least-known Turin-born artists of the Arte Povera generation. Another precious ‘secret’ that the city of Turin, discreet and haughty as ever, has managed to keep under wraps—in this case for almost half a century. From the immediate post-war period, a singular group of young artists in the city helped write the history of European art in the second half of the twentieth-century. Together with now universally acclaimed figures, such as Alighiero Boetti, Giuseppe Penone, Giulio Paolini, Giovanni Anselmo, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Gilberto Zorio, and Mario and Marisa Merz, there were also other leading artists in Turin, who have only recently begun to receive the international attention they deserve. Here I am thinking of the likes of Piero Gilardi, Gianni Piacentino, Carol Rama, Salvo, and Aldo Mondino, but also of the eccentric and eclectic Carlo Mollino. Griffa was one of the most discreet and isolated in this group of young people who revolved around Sperone’s gallery. He immediately showed an exclusive interest in painting, while his companions mainly moved out towards sculpture and installation from the mid-sixties.”—Andrea Bellini
Fine copy, almost As New.
2022, English
Softcover, 448 pages, 20.5 x 14.5 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$59.00 - Out of stock
In these essays and conversations, Daniel Birnbaum explores what conceptual artist Daniel Buren referred to as the ‘frames of art’. As a director of institutions, Birnbaum has organized events inside and outside some of the most significant art institutions in Europe, including the Venice Biennale, the Städelschule in Frankfurt, Moderna Museet and the Centre Pompidou. Like few other curators he has pushed the boundaries of the studio, the exhibition, and the museum in an attempt to find new ways to ‘frame’ art. This volume contains examples of curatorial approaches to education, exhibition-making and the presentation of collections.
Daniel Birnbaum, born 1963 in Stockholm, is a Swedish art curator and an art critic.
2016, English
Hardcover, 224 pages, 22 x 30 cm
Published by
Nero / Rome
$88.00 - In stock -
The catalogue of Metzger's first extensive overview: divided into sections—each of which is accompanied by a critical text—corresponding to those presented in the exhibition, the publication provides systematic insight into an artistic oeuvre considered as one of the most important in the 20th century (with texts by Mathieu Copeland, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Yoko Ono, Hermann Nitsch…).
If the retrospective, which started at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Torun before travelling to Oslo, was presented in distinctively different formats—the former providing audiences with a wide overview of Metzger's career and works, including attention to his early years of political activism and engagement and concomitant radicalization, and the latter focusing upon deeper researched aspects of the artist's production,—the exhibition catalogue provides readers with a rich array of theoretical contributions, including a conversation between Dobrila Denegri and Yoko Ono, Ivor Davies, Hermann Nitsch and Jon Hendricks, as well as Metzger's own writings.
The contributors Pontus Kyander, Andrew Wilson, Mathieu Copeland, Dobrila Denegri, Leanne Dmyterko, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Manuel Olveira take up different aspects of Metzger's work, from the artist's early political activism, to his experimentation with painting to his drafting of the manifestoes for Auto-Destructive Art, providing us with an invaluable and much awaited document for consultation in contemporary art.
Published following the eponymous exhibition at Centre of Contemporary Art in Torun, Poland, from November 8, 2015, to January 17, 2016, and the joint exhibition “Gustav Metzger in Oslo – Extremes Touch and Liquid Crystal Environment” at Kunsthall Oslo and Stiftelsen Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, from November 14, 2015 to January 31st, 2016.
The artistic oeuvre of Gustav Metzger (1926-2017), in which the concept of Auto-Destructive Art and the Art Strike hold a central role, is considered as one of the most important in the 20th century.
2020, English
Hardcover (clothbound in slipcase), 384 pages, 23 x 30 cm
Published by
The Shed / US
$130.00 - Out of stock
"Agnes Denes, the queen of land art, made one of New York's greatest public art projects ever in 1982. Now, the world might be catching up with her." — Karrie Jacobs, New York Times
Agnes Denes: Absolutes and Intermediates accompanies the largest exhibition of the artist's work in New York to date, held at The Shed in fall 2019 as part of the arts space's opening season. Presenting more than 130 works, this comprehensive publication, presented in an embossed slipcase, spans the 50-year career of the path-breaking artist dubbed "the queen of land art" by the New York Times, famed for her iconic Wheatfield—A Confrontation (1982), for which she planted a two-acre wheatfield in Lower Manhattan on the Battery Park Landfill, in the shadow of the then recently erected Twin Towers.
A major undertaking, this superb hardcover catalog includes a comprehensive text by the exhibition's curator, Emma Enderby, an interview with Denes by Hans Ulrich Obrist, essays by prominent scholars and curators including Caroline A. Jones, Lucy R. Lippard and Timothy Morton that examine Denes' multifaceted practice in new ways, writings by the artist and reflections by curators who have worked with Denes over the course of her career. New works by Denes commissioned by The Shed for the exhibition are presented in a special insert.
Budapest-born, New York-based artist Agnes Denes (born 1931) rose to international attention in the 1960s and 1970s as a leading figure in conceptual, environmental and ecological art. A pioneer of several art genres, she has created work in many mediums, utilizing various disciplines--such as science, philosophy, linguistics, ecology and psychology—to analyze, document and ultimately aid humanity.
"Denes's ecological artworks, which she commenced in the late 1960s, are just as prescient as this early diagnosis of climate catastrophe. Over the ensuing decades, she has been called a visionary. But such encomiums risk eliding the depth and complexity they celebrate. Denes has never been just one thing." — Lauren O'Neill-Butler, Artforum
2021, English / Italian
Softcover, 288 pages, 32 x 24 cm
Published by
Mousse / Milan
$89.00 - In stock -
Edited by Luca Cerizza
Texts by Gianni Pettena, Stefano Pezzato, Christiane Rekade, Elisabetta Trincherini, and a conversation between Gianni Pettena, Hans Ulrich Obrist, and Luca Cerizza
“Gianni Pettena (born 1940, Bolzano, Italy) was a central figure in research regarding the boundary between architecture and art in the later 1960s—a movement Germano Celant dubbed “radical architecture.” Together with the Florentine groups Archizoom, Superstudio, and UFO, and Turinese groups like the Gruppo Strum, Pettena helped expand and redefine the limits of what could be described as architecture, making a fundamental contribution to the ferment that animated, at an international level, city planning debates in those years. Independently of his fellow radicals in Florence, Pettena took an anarchic and ironic attitude toward authority, whether exercised in politics, progress, or planning. Through an extraordinary variety of means, including installation, performance, photography, video, and design, he has remained “on strike out of his love of architecture” for more than fifty years. Rather than practice the discipline, he has chosen to challenge it through the language of art, critical and expository writing, and the medium of teaching. Within a practice filled with implications, attention to a respectful relationship with nature and its resources has been a constant characteristic of his work, and remains a crucial lesson in the context of the current environmental crisis.”—Luca Cerizza
2017, English
Hardcover, 364 pages, 17 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
Mousse / Milan
$60.00 - Out of stock
“The exhibition is conceived as a scripted space, like an automaton, producing different temporalities, a rhythm, an itinerary, and a duration. The visitor is guided through the spaces by the appearance and orchestration of sounds and images... a mental choreography.” – Philippe Parreno
Philippe Parreno is interested more in the dynamics of how a work of art is shown to the public than in its actual production, and in his films, installations, performances and texts, he subverts the codes normally applied to exhibition spaces. He places the construction of the exhibition at the heart of his process, approaching it through different formats and redefining the exhibition experience as a coherent object rather than as a collection of individual works.
Produced in conjunction with the H {N)Y P N(Y} OSIS exhibition – curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Alex Poots, with consulting curator Tom Eccles, in the spaces of the Park Avenue Armory in New York – and with Hypothesis – curated by Andrea Lissoni at Pirelli HangarBicocca in Milan – this monograph offers a rich critical overview of his work, with essays by Cyril Béghin, Molly Nesbit, Brian O’Doherty and Adam Thirlwell, and two interviews with Hans Ulrich Obrist and Andrea Lissoni.
It is thus an invaluable research tool for studying one of the most influential and charismatic figures on the contemporary art scene.
Edited by Andrea Lissoni.
Texts by Cyril Béghin, Andrea Lissoni, Molly Nesbit, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Brian O’Doherty, Philippe Parreno, Adam Thirlwell.
As New copy.
2015, English
Hardcover, 250 pages, 28 x 23 cm
Published by
Gregory R. Miller & Co. / New York
$120.00 - Out of stock
Primarily known for his paradigmatic "shelves" displaying everyday objects, Haim Steinbach (born 1944) has developed a practice that evolved from early minimalist painting with grids and monochromes to later large-scale installations that have seldom been seen in the US. Growing out of a traveling exhibition that features works drawn from throughout Steinbach's career, as well as archival materials and new site-specific installations, Object and Display urges readers to take a closer look at this seminal artist's works. Hundreds of full-color illustrations document the exhibition, which included photographs, models and recreations from past works, along with photography of the site-specific installations that appeared at each institution. New essays by writers Johanna Burton and Germano Celant explore the evolution of Steinbach's practice and his investigations into what constitutes an art object and how art and objects are displayed. Interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist, Tom Eccles, Beatrix Ruf.
2020, English
Hardcover, 152 pages, 23 x 29 cm
Published by
Stolpe Publishing / Stockholm
$50.00 - Out of stock
A handsomely redesigned edition of essays examining af Klint's final abstractions, edited Kurt Almqvist and Louise Belfrage.
The result of a series of lectures delivered during the 2016 Serpentine Galleries exhibition Hilma af Klint: Painting the Unseen, this volume gathers essays examining the last abstract series made by Hilma af Klint (1862-1944). The paintings were all created in the first half of the year 1920 and are the last paintings af Klint made before turning to watercolor. Reproductions of these images are complemented by essays from Briony Fer, David Lomas, Branden W. Joseph, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Daniel Birnbaum, which shed new light on af Klint and her importance for artists today, also addressing the need for a broader conception of art history that her work proposes. Beautifully redesigned by Sweden's most famous designer, this book is a key contribution to the burgeoning scholarship on this immensely popular painter.
2019, English
Softcover, 448 pages, 15 x 21cm
Published by
Koenig Books / London
Serpentine Gallery / London
$85.00 $50.00 - Out of stock
This already out-of-print major survey on renowned French artist Pierre Huyghe (born 1962) chronicles seminal works from the last decade, including his iconic Documenta 13 project "Untilled." An interview between Huyghe and Hans Ulrich Obrist and an essay by Dorothea von Hantelmann accompany drawings, diagrams, photographs, film stills and more.
As New with light cover wear (hence reduced price)
2020, English / Japanese
Softcover (w. dust-jacket, poster, stickers), 108 pages, 26.5 x 36.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
PARCO / Tokyo
Kaleidoscope Press / Milan
$220.00 - Out of stock
First edition.
Sold out in one week, this super book published by Italian art publisher KALEIDOSCOPE accompanies a two-artist exhibition co-curated by Alessio Ascari and Shinji Nanzuka, bringing together for the very first time the work of Japanese artist Hajime Sorayama and Swiss artist HR Giger. Touring from PARCO Museum in Tokyo to PARCO Event Hall in Osaka between December 2020 and February 2021, the exhibition coincides with the 80th anniversary of Giger’s birth and features over 50 works ranging from the late 1960s to the present day.
The catalogue, designed by Swiss-based art direction firm Kasper-Florio with Samuel Bänziger, features a foreword by co-curator Alessio Ascari, a critical essay by Venus Lau, an interview with the late HR Giger by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Patrick Frey, and a recent interview with Sorayama by Ascari.
Lavishly illustrated throughout, this beautiful first edition also comes with a 50 x 70 cm two-sided poster, and two 20 cm die-cut stickers.
Born and trained at opposite ends of the world, Sorayama and Giger are apparently at odds—one’s bright colors are swallowed by the other’s dark chiaroscuro; one’s enthusiastic outlook on technology borders with the other’s nightmarish dystopia; one’s “super-realism” challenges the other’s surrealism—yet they share more than meets the eye. Both emerged in the 1970s and 1980s, becoming acknowledged masters of airbrush painting and influential creators beyond the boundaries of the traditional art world, blurring the relationship between commercial and personal work. But more importantly, at the very core of their practice lies a similar concern: an obsessive investigation of AI, eternal life, and the fusion of organic and apparatus. Gynoids (female androids) are predominant subjects, conjuring the post-human and the apotheosis of the woman to reveal an underlying tension between life, death, power and desire.
Hajime Sorayama (b. 1947 in Imabari, Ehime prefecture) has established his position as a legendary artist, both within Japan and internationally, for his extensive oeuvre that centers upon an ongoing pursuit for beauty in the human body and the machine. Best known for his precisely detailed, hand-painted portrayals of voluptuous women, obtained through an astoundingly artful use of a wide array of realistic expressional techniques, most prominently airbrush painting, the artist’s international recognition is inextricably tied to his signature series titled “Sexy Robot” (1978-) featuring erotic android figures clad in shiny chrome metal, and to AIBO, the award-winning robotic pet he designed for SONY in 1999.
Hans Ruedi Giger (1940–2014) was a Swiss surrealist painter, sculptor, and set designer known for his biomechanical creatures, extraterrestrial landscapes, and disturbing sexual machines. In a career that spanned more than five decades, he employed a staggering variety of media, including furniture, movie props, prints, paintings and sculptures, often creating exhibition displays and total environments with the immersive quality of a wunderkammer—including, most notably, the HR Giger Museum in Gruyères. In 1979, his concept design for Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) won an Academy Award for Best Achievement in Visual Effects and catapulted to fame his daunting vision of death and futurism.
First (sold out) edition. As New.
2016, English
Softcover, 730 pages, 15 x 22 cm
Published by
Karlsruhe University of Art and Design and the Geneva School of Art and Design / Genève
Sternberg Press / Berlin
$60.00 - Out of stock
Markus Miessen, Yann Chateigné (Eds.)
Contributions by Stuart Bailey, Bassam El Baroni, Thomas Bayrle, Jeremy Beaudry, Beatrice von Bismarck, Beatriz Colomina, Céline Condorelli, Mathieu Copeland, Dexter Sinister, Joseph Grima, Nav Haq, Sandi Hilal, Nikolaus Hirsch, Thomas Jefferson, Christoph Keller, Alexander Kluge, Joachim Koester, Armin Linke, Julia Moritz, Rabih Mroué, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Seth Price, Walid Raad, Alice Rawsthorn, Patricia Reed, David Reinfurt, Claire de Ribaupierre, Eyal Weizman, et al.
What are the processes that enable archives to become productive? Conventional archives tend to be defined through the content-specific accumulation of material, which conforms to an existing order or narrative. They rarely transform their structure. In contrast to this model of archival practice and preservation, the conflictual archive has an open framework in which it actively transforms itself, allowing for the creation of new and surprising relationships. Illustrating how spaces of knowledge can be devised, developed, and designed, this archive reveals itself as a space in which documents and testimonies open up a stage for productive dispute and struggle.
Exploring nontraditional archives, such as those of Harald Szeemann, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Sitterwerk, and the publishing house Merve, The Archive as a Productive Space of Conflict offers new perspectives on archival practice, interrogating whether archives need spatial permanence, and, if so, which design framework should be applied for the archive to take on more than a singular form of existence. The research project is a collaboration between the Karlsruhe University of Art and Design and the Geneva School of Art and Design (HEAD – Genève).
Copublished with Karlsruhe University of Art and Design and the Geneva School of Art and Design (HEAD – Genève)
Design by Jonas Fechner and Lisa Naujack