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:
OPEN 12—5 THU—FRI
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7.
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
Art
Theory / Essay
Architecture / Interior
Graphic Design / Typography
Photography
Fashion
Eros
LGBTQ+
Fiction / Poetry
Weird / Speculative / Science Fiction / Horror
Transgressive / Visceral / Abject
Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle
Film / Video
Painting
Sculpture / Installation
Performance / Dance / Theater
Drawing
Sound / Music
Curatorial
Group Shows / Collections
Periodicals
Out-of-print / Rare
Posters / Ephemera / Discs
Signed Books
World Food Books Gift Voucher
World Food Book Bag
Australian Art
Australian Photography
Japanese Photography
Conceptual Art
Minimal Art
Dada
'Pataphysics / Oulipo
Fluxus
Concrete Poetry
Pop Art
Surrealism
Arte Povera
Arte Informale / Haute Pâte / Tachism
Nouveau Réalisme / Zero / Kinetic
Situationism / Lettrism
Collage / Mail Art / Xerox Art
Art Brut / Folk / Visionary / Fantastic
Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées
Furniture
Italian Radical Design / Postmodernism
Textiles
Ceramics / Glass
Counterculture
Protest / Revolt
Anarchism
Socialism / Communism / Capitalism
Literary Theory / Semiotics / Language
Feminism
Fetishism / BDSM
Drugs / Psychedelia
Crime / Violence
Animal Rights / Veganism
Occult / Esoterica
Ecology / Earth / Alternative Living
Whole Earth / Crafts
All prices in AUD (Australian dollars)
Pick-Ups
Please note: The bookshop is closed until February 1, 2024.
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after this date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 3 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.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund, 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.
2004, English
Softcover, 164 pages, 23 x 28 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / Used*,
Published by
Nest / New York
$60.00 - Out of stock
Nest: A Quarterly of Interiors was a unique and ground-breaking magazine published from 1997 to 2004, for a total run of 26 issues.
Marketed as an interior design magazine, and edited by Joseph Holtzman, Nest generally eschewed the conventionally beautiful luxury interiors showcased in other magazines, and instead featured photographs of nontraditional, exceptional, and unusual environments. Fred A. Bernstein, writing in the New York Times, wrote that Joseph Holtzman "believed that an igloo, a prison cell or a child's attic room (adorned with Farrah Fawcett posters) could be as compelling as a room by a famous designer." During its run, Nest showed the room of a 40-year-old diaper lover, the lair of an Indonesian bird that decorates with coloured stones and vomit, the final resting place of Napoleon’s penis, the quarters of Navy seamen, a barbed-wire-trimmed bed that doubled as a tank, and a Gothic Christmas card from filmmaker John Waters. Noted architect Rem Koolhaas called it "an anti-materialistic, idealistic magazine about the hyperspecific in a world that is undergoing radical leveling, an 'interior design' magazine hostile to the cosmetic." Artist Richard Tuttle was quoted as saying that Mr. Holtzman "channeled the collective unconscious, to give us the pleasure of ornament before we even knew we wanted it."
Nest issue 23, Winter 2003-2004 features, amongst much more: Biosphere, "Camp Nest" Joseph Holtzman's country house, Biosquat - the Austin eco-village, "The Most Indian house in America" - the 1888 Manhatten apartment of painter, interior decorator and tastemaker Lockwood de Forest, Humberto and Fernando Campana, First Lady Jackie O's interiors, and much more... A magazine like no other before or since.
2015, English
Softcover, 260 pages, 30 x 23 cm
Published by
Bergen Kunsthall / Norway
$67.00 - In stock -
Published on the occasion of the first major institutional show by American artist Will Benedict, held at the Bergen Kunsthall in Norway, 31 October–14 December 2014, this heavy, visually-encompassing volume documents this exhibition along with many exhibits across the last few years. All designed by Will and Theodoros Gennitsakis, edited by Martin Clark and Steiner Sekkingstad.
Corruption Feeds is Will Benedict’s largest and most ambitious exhibition to date. It demonstrates the full breadth of his practice as an artist, curator and, most recently, filmmaker. Dividing the galleries at Bergen Kunsthall into a solo exhibition and a curated group show, his own works are brought into dialogue with an eclectic selection of found visual material, as well as works by a number of artists invited by Benedict, including Wolfgang Breuer, Clegg & Guttmann, Howard Finster, Gaylen Gerber,Tom Humphrey, Inventory, Fredrik Kolstø, David Leonard, Michele Di Menna, Pentti Monkkonen, Puppies Puppies, Lin May Saeed, Lucie Stahl, Anders Svarstad, Sergei Tcherepnin, Paul Theriault and Karl Uchermann.
Across the various different aspects of the exhibition, Benedict addresses themes of global distribution, agriculture, marketing and trade. The group section of the exhibition includes a new video, commissioned by Bergen Kunsthall and made by Benedict in collaboration with the artist and journalist David Leonard. Shot in various locations in France, Norway, India and the USA, it explores the transnational politics of food distribution through reportage, interviews and analysis, with various protagonists featuring a talking dolphin, giant rats and human rain. Other works in this section of the show further develop these ideas, and go on to address the marketing and advertising languages of the last three decades, revealing the symbiotic, or perhaps cannibalistic, relationship between contemporary art and commercial design and advertising—a space which Benedict’s own work frequently inhabits and explores.
Will Benedict (b. 1978) lives and works in Paris.
2010, English
Hardcover, 160 pages, 17.2 x 22.4 cm
Published by
A.R.T. Press / New York
$59.00 - Out of stock
This book presents a selection of snapshots and accompanying inscriptions sent by Felix Gonzalez-Torres to Doug Ashford, Julie Ault, Bill Bartman, Susan Cahan, Amada Cruz, David Deitcher, Suzanne Ghez, Ann Goldstein, Claudio González, Jim Hodges, Susan Morgan, Robert Nickas, Mario Nuñez, and Christopher Williams between 1990–1995.
The snapshots are quick poetic communiqués, a visual report on Felix's outlook at particular moments in time, small gestures of hope, pleasure, and desire. They give evidence to some of his multiple fascinations: pets, furniture, collectible dolls, politics, art, friendship, beauty, love and optimism.
1993, English
Softcover (w. dust-jacket and poster insert 99 x 38 cm), 96 pages, 22 x 30.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / As New,
Published by
A.R.T. Press / New York
$59.00 - Out of stock
Published in 1993, this was the first monograph on Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Known for his installations and public artworks that invite the viewer's direct participation, the artist died in 1996 at the young age of thirty-six having created one of the most innovative and impressive oeuvres in contemporary art all in the short span of ten years.
It includes essays by Susan Cahan and Jan Avgikos, copious photographic documentation of projects, and a lengthy transcribed interview with fellow activist artist Tim Rollins. In this interview Gonzales-Torres talks about his commitment to social change and his understanding of his role as an artist in effecting that change.
These are As New copies of the 1993 paperbound first edition with the original folded poster insert, from Art Resources Transfer (A.R.T. Press).
2015, English
Softcover, 276 pages (colour ill.), 22 x 28 cm
Published by
JRP Ringier / Zürich
$66.00 - Out of stock
This publication presents a broad selection of Josephine Pryde's work from 1990 to 2014. In photographic works that encompass the full range of the medium's historical and current genres, styles, and techniques, but also through sculpture and writing, the Berlin- and London-based artist (*1967) offers incisive, often ironic, and provocative commentary on the values, hierarchies, and economies subtending the field of contemporary art against the backdrop of larger societal shifts. Estranging the familiar or conversely expressing the common in a radically unforeseen manner, Pryde's ingenuous choice of subject matter, unusual formal solutions and surprising juxtapositions continue to capture international exhibition audiences.
Prefaced by art historian André Rottmann, the volume features new essays by scholar Rhea Anastas and artist/critic Melanie Gilligan that insightfully survey Pryde's work over the last two decades, providing in-depth discussions of the artist's continuous engagements with photographic imagery, visual culture, social and artistic conventions, as well as political issues associated with feminism (among other concerns). An illustrated exhibition chronology and detailed bibliography provides further information on the artist's career.
Featuring more than 350 color images, this most comprehensive monograph available on Pryde's work to date appears subsequent to the artist's mid-career survey exhibitions at the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf, and at Kunsthalle Bern in 2012.
Published in collaboration with Kunsthalle Bern and Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf.
2015, English
Hardcover, 150 pages (colour ill.), 22 x 26.5 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$50.00 - Out of stock
Torbjørn Rødland: Sasquatch Century presents a rich visual flow of Norwegian artist Torbjørn Rødland’s work, followed by an introduction by curator Milena Hoegsberg, and a commissioned essay by writer and curator Linda Norden. Norden’s text, digests the beginning photographic rhythms, and provides an insightful lens to interpret and re-examine Rødland’s complex practice. As Norden says:
“The question we are left with is less about what to make of a given image’s contents than it is about Rødland’s larger ambition toward symbolism, or the workings of a post-millennial mythology. These are ambitions that set him apart from his predecessors; but his photography still trades on the manipulative strategies of advertising and institutional politics that have dominated culturally savvy, would-be critical photography from at least the Pictures Generation onward. Throughout, the question has been: How might images that traffic in cultural coding do more than serve as catechisms for the feedback loops that define our moment?”
The title Sasquatch Century refers to the mythical, hairy, humanoid creature historically viewed as the precursor to Bigfoot. The Sasquatch has been solidified in mythology and pop-culture through a simultaneous belief in and denial of its existence. As such the phenomenon embodies many of the artist’s interests in activating the tension between myth and reality, between the familiar and ungraspable, and the constructed and authentic.
The publication supplements the exhibition of the same title on view at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter January 23 – April 26, 2015.
2015, English
Hardcover (with dustjacket), 128 pages (colour ill.), 22.9 x 28.7 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$45.00 - In stock -
This book marks the occasion of two solo exhibitions of the artist, the first at Presentation House Gallery, North Vancouver (8 September – 14 October 2012), and the second at Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne (7 November – 21 December 2014).
The photographs Annette Kelm has produced over the past fifteen years constitute, in all the diversity of their forms, one of the most fascinating, resonant contributions to recent contemporary art. Emerging during an era of photography's rapid and ongoing reinvention as both artistic object and digital image, Kelm has situated herself as a picture maker of unapologetic clarity.
Her practice employs a comprehensive understanding of and devotion to established traditions of photographic studio practice, marked by an affiliation for analogue film and darkroom techniques, as well as a continuing interest in the pictorial genres of landscape, portraiture and still life.
With recourse to these tried and tested idioms, she has constructed a body of photographic imagery that is remarkable for its visual acuity and resistance to descriptive language.
Features a conversation between Isabelle Graw and Annette Kelm / Tom McDonough.
2015, English
Softcover, 208 pages (colour & b/w ill.), 21.8 x 27.3 cm
Published by
JRP Ringier / Zürich
$66.00 - Out of stock
Since the 1970s Barbara Kasten has developed her expansive practice of photography through the lens of many different disciplines, including sculpture, painting, theater, textile, and installation. Spanning her nearly five-decade engagement with abstraction, light, and architectonic form, this publication situates Kasten’s practice within current conversations around sculpture and photography.
Barbara Kasten (*1936, Chicago; lives Chicago) trained as a painter and textile artist, receiving her MFA from the California College of Arts and Crafts (CCAC) in Oakland in 1970. There she studied with pioneering fiber artist Trude Guermonprez, a former teacher at Black Mountain College and an associate of Anni Albers. In 1971 Kasten received a Fulbright to travel to Poznań, Poland, to work with noted sculptor Magdalena Abakanowicz. During the 1980s she embarked on her "Construct" series, which incorporates life-size elements such as metal, wire, mesh, and mirrors into installations produced specifically for the camera. Kasten was one of the first artists to be invited by Polaroid to use its new large format film, and it was with this that she made many of her best known works, her palette becoming bolder in response to the lush, saturated quality of the medium. In the mid-1980s she stepped out of the studio and began working with large architectural spaces that were symbolic of both economic and cultural capital.
“Barbara Kasten: Stages” is the first major survey of her work. The publication includes a biography of the artist, a conversation between Kasten and artist Liz Deschenes, and new scholarly essays by curator Alex Klein, and art historians Alex Kitnick and Jenni Sorkin.
Published in collaboration with the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania.
1985, English
hardcover w/ dust jacket, 40 pages (16 colour ill.), 24 x 29 cm,
1st edition, Out of print title / used*,
Published by
New York Graphic Society Books
$120.00 - Out of stock
"The CONSTRUCTS series began as 8×10 Polaroids. The sculptural constructions used to create large scale photograms inspired studio installations. Referencing constructivism, the temporary theatrical tableau are made to be photographed in approximately 4 to 8 feet square spaces. Color, form and space are recorded with an 8×10 or 4×5 view camera." Barbara Kasten
with 13 contemporary poems and essay by Estelle Jussim
1978, German
Softcover, 118 pages, 20 x 20cm
1st edition, Out of print title / used*,
Published by
Schirmer & Mosel / Munich
$58.00 - Out of stock
Fantastic book dedicated to the Photographic work of Wols.
118 pages of well illustrated text including an introduction and a major biographical feature on Wols - the pseudonym of Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze (1913 - 1951), a German painter and photographer predominantly active in France. This is then followed by 102 pages of Wols' B&W photographs, including 29 in the streets of Paris, 26 portraits, and the remainder still lives, object and interiors.
Though broadly unrecognized in his lifetime, Wols is considered a pioneer of Lyrical Abstraction, one of the most influential artists of the Tachisme movement. He is the author of a book on art theory entitled Aphorismes de Wols.
1981, English / Japanese
Softcover, 175 pages, 22. 8 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / Used*,
Published by
A.D.A Edita / Tokyo
$60.00 - Out of stock
Ninth issue from 1982 of this now classic architectural series, the great GA Houses from Tokyo, Japan.
One of the finest architecture journal series ever published, GA Houses extends from the famous GA (Global Architecture) journal series, presented by the highly esteemed publishing house that also published the GA, GA Document, and GI (Global Interior) architectural publications.
Each issue of GA Houses highlights a selection of residential architectural projects by renowned international architects.
Beautiful architectural photography of residential building interiors, exteriors and architectural details, along with texts (mostly in Japanese) and floor-plans/elevation drawings make up the profiles on each featured building or residential environment. The visual generosity of these handsomely designed and printed journals make them a treasure for any architecture or interior design enthusiast or collector.
GA Houses No.9, 1981
Special Feature: New Waves in American Architecture
Contents include:
Trip to Epoch-Making
ELIEL SAARINE RESIDENCE
by Peter C. Papademetriou
Meet the Architect:
BOHLIN POWELL LARKIN CYWINSKI - Summer Residence for Mr. and Mrs. Eric Q. Bohlin, West Cornwall, Connecticut; Summer/Weekend Residence, Northeastern Pennsylvania; Residence for Norman Gaffney, Coatesville, Pennsylvania; MacHarg Residence, Northwestern Pennsylvania; Caretaker’s Complex Shelly Ridge Girl Scout Center, Springfield Townsip, Pennsylvania; Residence for Mr. and Mrs. Charles Feldman, Jackson Township, Pennsylvania; Residence for Albert and Barbara Albert, Waverly, Pennsylvania.
MICHELL/GIURGOLA - Kasperson Residence, Conestoga, Pennsylvania
EDWARD LARRABEE BARNES - Vacation House, Mount Desert Island, Maine
JOEL LEVINSON - Arbor House, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
JOAN SACKS - Rocca House, Los Angeles, California
MICHAEL FRANKLIN ROSS - John and Jean Ross Residence, Old Westbury, New York
RICARDO BOFILL TALLER DE ARQUITECTURA - House in Montras near Costa Brava, Spain
Special Feature:
New Wave in American Architecture: 2
EUGENE KUPPER - Nilsson House, Los Angeles, California; Wall House in Berkeley, California
ERIC OWEN MOSS - 708 House, Los Angeles, California Fun House Calabassas, California Easter Island Condominium Pasadena, California Pin Ball House Los Angeles, California; Adams House, Los Angeles, California
FREDERICK FISHER - Caplin Residence, Venice, California; Jan Horn Residence, Beverly Glen, California; Jorgensen Residence, Hollywood, California
PETER C. PAPADEMETRIOU/bv - Davis Residence, Houston, Texas
PETER DE BRETTEVILLE - Villa Cambiamento, Malibu, California Padiglione di Riposa; Willow Glen House, Los Angeles, California; Sunset House, Los Angeles, California
Studio WORKS - Gagosian Gallery, Venis, California
TAFT ARCHITECTS - Grove Court Townhouses, Houston, Texas; A House in the City (Estes House), Houston, Texas
MORPHOSIS - Flores Residence Addition, Pacific Palisades, California; 2-4-6-8 House, Venice, California; Sedlak Addition, Venice, California; Mexico Ⅱ House, Ensenada, Baja, Mexico; Cohen Residence, Woodland Hills, California; Lawrence Residence, Hermosa Beach, California
1987, Japanese / English
Softcover, 176 pages, 22. 8 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / Used*,
Published by
A.D.A Edita / Tokyo
$60.00 - Out of stock
Eleventh issue from 1987 of this now classic architectural series, the great GA Houses from Tokyo, Japan.
One of the finest architecture journal series ever published, GA Houses extends from the famous GA (Global Architecture) journal series, presented by the highly esteemed publishing house that also published the GA, GA Document, and GI (Global Interior) architectural publications.
Each issue of GA Houses highlights a selection of residential architectural projects by renowned international architects.
Beautiful architectural photography of residential building interiors, exteriors and architectural details, along with texts (mostly in Japanese) and floor-plans/elevation drawings make up the profiles on each featured building or residential environment. The visual generosity of these handsomely designed and printed journals make them a treasure for any architecture or interior design enthusiast or collector.
GA Houses No.11, 1987
Special Feature: New Waves in American Architecture
Contents include:
Elements on Residence 8
POINTS OF ADDRESS by Donlyn Lyndon
Trip to Epoch-Making 7
GEORGE HOWE “FORTUNE ROCK”
Text by Joseph B. Thomas
FRANK O. GEHRY - Indiana Project, Venice, California; Spiller Residence, South of Los Angeles, California
GWATHMEY SIEGEL - Houston Residence, Houston, Texas
ROBERT A.M. STERN - Points of View, Mount Desert Island, Maine
ROBERT MITTELSTADT - R. Mittelstadt Duplex, San Francisco, California
DANIEL SOLOMON - Bellair Duplex, San Francisco, California; Glover Street Condominiums, San Francisco, California; Castro Common --- San Francisco, California; Francisco Reservoir --- San Francisco, California
WILLIAM KESSLER - Private Residence, Southeast Michigan
GRAHAM GUND - Shapleigh House, Masachusetts Coast; School-House Condominiums, Boston, Massachusetts.
BAKER ROTHSCHILD HORN BLYTH - Fitzwater Factory Court, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Candy Factory Court, Baker Residence, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Winig Residence, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Special Feature: New Waves in American Architecture 4;
RALPH LERNER - Prokop House Addition, Port Washington, New York; Villa Vasone, Sa~o Paulo, Brazil; Barn Renovation, Palmyra, Virginia; Artist and Writers Housing, Rye, England
RUBIN and SMITH-MILLER - Residence with Outbuildings, Southern Connecticut; Apartment, Fifth Avenue, New York City; Fifth Avenue Apartment, Fifth Avenue at Central Park, New York City
SUSANA TORRE - Back House (Two Silo House), Poundridge, New York; Clark House, Southampton, Long Island
ROBERT FOOTH SHANNON - “Cabin” for the Architect; Row-House Renovation, 49 Garden Street, Boston, Massachusetts; Solar Renaissance Homes; Wooten House, Windham, Vermont
MARK McINTURFF - McInturff House #1, Bethesda, Maryland; Mcinturff House #2, Bethesda, Maryland
TOD WILLIAMS - House in Montclair; Michigan Project; Williams' Barns in Sagaponack, New York; House on Long Island Sound
2015, English
Hardcover, 338 pages, 30 x 24 cm
Published by
Self Service / Paris
$38.00 $20.00 - Out of stock
Self Service Spring / Summer 2015 Issue 42
Guest-edited by Jane How.
Self Service Spring / Summer 2015 Issue 42, with Adrienne Jüliger photographed by Alasdair McLellan, includes editorials photographed by Mario Sorrenti, Craig McDean, Harley Weir, Alasdair McLellan, and Glen Luchford.
Self Service magazine is a fashion and cultural biannual magazine. The magazine features the preeminent players in the fashion world, with innovative editorials photographed by the world’s best photographers and stylists.
Note: Due to the size/weight of this volume, your order will possibly 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.
2015, English
Softcover, 520 pages (b/w ill.), 20.5 x 25.5 cm
Published by
Mousse Publishing / Milan
$83.00 $40.00 - In stock -
Symbols abound in Shannon Ebner’s work. She uses them as if they were words in a poem, emphasizing their polysemy and multiplying the number of potential meanings and interpretations. Like musical scores, her alphabets make intervals and suspensions literal and thus visible. They include the “other” (silence, non-verbal signs, misspellings, handwriting) as a presence whose meaning must be negotiated. They capitalize what is usually repressed in written language (or simply taken for granted), in order to reinstate another structure of understanding. Language is an expression of order and Ebner makes this very clear by giving each letter the weight of concrete. STRIKE slows down the pace of reading to its zero degree. One letter, one page. One letter, one page. A slash. An exercise in reading akin to our first decodings of the written word, when we started, as children, learning how to do things “by the book.”
2015, English
Softcover, 275 pages (colour ill.), 23 x 30 cm
Published by
Kaleidoscope Press / Milan
$22.00 - Out of stock
Kaleidoscope #23 (Winter 2015).
HIGHLIGHTS:
JASON MATTHEW LEE (by Alexander Shulan), DANIEL BAUMANN (by Aoife Rosenmeyer), Marilyn Minter (by Gianni Jetzer), MAGALI REUS (by Ruba Katrib), KNOW WAVE RADIO (by Alexandre Stipanovich), BEATRICE GIBSON (by George Vasey), CATHERINE AHEARN (by Tobias Czudej), K-HOLE (by Kevin McGarry), JAMIAN JULIANO-VILLANI (by Joshua Abelow), ALESSANDRO BAVA (by Francesco Garutti), ZHAO YAO (by Venus Lau), and IDEA BOOKS (by Xerxes Cook).
At a time when feminism resurges both in critical discourse and media headlines, while at the same time entering a list of words overdue to be banned, Kaleidoscope's MAIN THEME section is devoted to a reconsideration of female identities and role models. POST WOMAN is composed of a think tank, a think piece by Natasha Stagg and five interviews, including with Juliana Huxtable (by Andrew Durbin), Amalia Ulman (by Francesca Gavin), Judith Bernstein (by Hanne Mugaas), Massimiliano Gioni (by Pietro Rigolo), and Girls Like Us (by Felix Burrichter).
To follow, this issue’s MONO section and cover story are dedicated to Norwegian artist IDA EKBLAD. Fueled by an outright marvel for this thing called art, her work is distinguished by an extreme degree of impatience and prolificness. Her shift and turns are the result of a feverish engagement with pure materiality, synthesized with popular culture and animated by alien transformations. This definitive monographic survey comprises an essay by Peter J. Amdam, an interview by Cory Arcangel and an original portrait by Sølve Sundsbø.
Later on, the VISIONS section invites the eye to an enthralling journey across almost 100 pages of visual contributions by artists, curators and image-makers, including: TOBIAS ZIELONY, “Jenny Jenny”; MR.; “Chicago”: BARBARA CRANE and TONY LEWIS; DAVID DOUARD in Los Angeles; JONAS WOOD; “Alliantecnik,” curated by Alessio Ascari; TIMUR SI-QIN, “Premier Machinic Funerary”; and GRAHAM LITTLE.
Lastly, the closing section of REGULARS features our insightful columns on the past, present and future of art and culture: PRODUCERS features Carson Chan’s conversation with Ballistic Architecture Machine; in FUTURA 89+, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Simon Castets interview young artist Philipp Timischl; Andrey Bold questions TOKYO’s art scene as part of the PANORAMA series; in PIONEERS Fredi Fischli and Niels Olsen talk to cult Swiss designers Trix and Robert Haussmann; and in the first installment of RENAISSANCE MAN, Jeffrey Deitch celebrates the art of choreographer KAROLE ARMITAGE.
2015, English / Italian
Softcover (newspaper), 302 pages, 37 x 26 cm
Published by
Mousse Publishing / Milan
$18.00 $10.00 - In stock -
In this issue:
Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Art and Literature, Darja Bajagić, Walter Dahn, Fiction in Reality, Have We Become the Internet?, Lynn Hershman Leeson, The History of Exhibitions, Intimacy in Art, Nicholas Mangan, Park McArthur, The Multiplication of Moving Perspectives, Opening up to the Unexpected, Philippe Parreno and Paul B. Preciado, Systems Prosthetics, Time as Material, The Withdrawal of the Artist, Betty Woodman, Steina and Woody Vasulka.
Driven by the energy of art writing and artists' writing, contemporary literature seems to be consciously migrating into the art world. Some artists exist halfway between the two worlds and are evolving the most innovative characteristics of the literary canon. Brian Dillon attempts to analyze this type of writing, its practice and its potential.
Philippe Parreno and Paul B. Preciado, a philosopher, writer and activist at the helm of the Independent Studies Program of the MACBA, raise ground-breaking questions ranging from the coercion of the public by the institution to processes of disidentification from dominant sexual identities, in a conversation conducted by Hans Ulrich Obrist.
Starting in the 1990s, the history of exhibitions has taken on greater resonance in art writing. One precursor of this fundamental type of research was Bruce Altshuler, with his The Avant-Garde in Exhibition. Altshuler, Jens Hoffmann and Elena Filipovic engage in an extensive conversation on the history of exhibitions and the role artists have in organizing them.
Chus Martínez analyzes the beauty of an ecology of events of little interest for the market, but driven by an energy that might pressure the system to open to the unexpected, to balance out the impulse to guarantee results before any attempts have been made to break new ground.
The work of Lawrence Abu Hamdan reveals how the forensic linguistics applied to test the accents of political asylum applicants is often unreliable, on a par with the many audio charlatans hired to ascertain the origins of individuals. The artist discusses all this with Mihnea Mircan.
Youthful transgressions, previously fueled by romantic literature, have been transformed into desire for extreme self-assertion modeled on "first-person-shooter" video games and action movies. Ingo Niermann wonders about how it might be possible to reverse this trend, through the introduction of a positive kind of transgression.
What does it mean to be human in the light of increasingly pervasive technological developments? Omar Kholeif moderates a conversation between Constant Dullaart, Zach Blas and James Bridle, artists who have reflected at length on the impact of the integration of software and algorithms on everyday life.
Michael Wang explores the aesthetics of an art that actively engages with different systems, and the perspective of artists as they consider the objectives, limits and structure of a work that is no longer a matter of objects, but nimbly moves through the folds of these systems as energy.
A handful of artists over the last 50 years have "self-absconded" from the public eye and the social whirl of the system. Martin Herbert discreetly tracks several of them to formulate a hypothesis that reflects an increasing schism between the needs of artists and those of the art world.
Lynn Hershman Leeson's work is an incessant exploration of the nature of consciousness and its extension via technology. Kathy Noble gives an exhaustive overview of her versatile output, from the early pieces to films on identity, cloning and feminist politics featuring Tilda Swinton.
Confession in art can lead to works plagued by egocentric attitude or can bring results of genuine "alongsideness," where the social becomes visible without recourse to reconstruction. Lauren Cornell and Johanna Burton analyze works and artists that have been able to make critical use of intimacy.
Nice to Meet You:
The theme of access and the tensions involved in its possibility are the fulcrum of Park McArthur's production and the focus of this interview with Daniel S. Palmer.
Natalia Sielewicz talks to Darja Bajagić whose work recontextualizes saucy images seen as stereotypes by Western eyes, granting them a sort of liberating ambiguity.
Steina and Woody Vasulka are leading exponents of the video experimentation that began in the late 1960s. Elyse Mallouk analyzes their works from various decades in the light of our growing relationship with the inorganic systems that nurture our relationships of feedback.
Joan Jonas, Ken Okiishi, Jennifer West, and Lucy Raven meet on the common ground of work located at the intersection between visual arts, moving image and performance. In a conversation introduced and moderated by Filipa Ramos they share their ideas and discuss their practice and its relation to time, history, popular culture, theater and narrative.
Australian artist Nicholas Mangan talks to Mariana Cánepa Luna about his work that investigates the troubled relationship between man and the natural environment, and analyzes contexts and objects capable of freeing up narratives that take stock of reality.
Andrew Berardini visits the big clay-dusted studio-vase of Betty Woodman. Her chubby ceramic odalisques, with their alluring forms, covered with fragments of precious stones, embroideries and miniatures, tug him into a grand theater of forms and colors, wild things and aquatic creatures.
Walter Dahn indicated a path for art after conceptualism with his new way of thinking about painting. Daniel Schreiber met with the artist in his home in Cologne to talk about the artist's story and recent works, a series of silkscreens linked to the revolutionary power of music.
After the linear perspective of the Renaissance, new perspectives have been explored, starting with chronophotography and the overturning of vertical or bird's-eye perspective. Jennifer Allen investigates these various perspectives in relation to a number of contemporary artists who have reached multiple, mobile and fragmented visions.
The Artist as Curator
Issue #6 an insert in Mousse Magazine #47
Mel Bochner, Working Drawings And Other Visible Things On Paper Not Necessarily Meant To Be Viewed As Art, 1966
Hank Bull, Shen Fan, Zhou Tiehai, Shi Yong, and Ding Yi, Let's Talk About Money: Shanghai First International Fax Art Exhibition, 1966
2014, English
Softcover, 256 pages (colour ill.), 23 x 30 cm
Published by
Kaleidoscope Press / Milan
$22.00 - Out of stock
Kaleidoscope’s newest release, Issue 22 (Fall 2014), introduces a completely redesigned and revamped version of the magazine, under the visionary art direction of Munich-based Bureau Mirko Borsche. The magazine’s new direction combines its defining curatorial and interdisciplinary approach with an emphasis on the power of images and a keen attention to the update, and is best epitomized by the new cover tagline: VISUAL CULTURE NOW.
In the renovated opening section of HIGHLIGHTS, twelve profiles account for the best of the season: Boychild (by Francesca Gavin), Ed Fornieles (by George Vasey), Adriano Costa (by Laura McLean-Ferris), Liu Chuang (by Venus Lau), Carol Rama (by Jesi Khadivi), Tabor Robak (by Alex Gartenfeld), Jana Euler (by Martha Kirszenbaum), Guan Xiao (by Pablo Larios), Alex Da Corte (by Piper Marshall), David Ostrowski (by Peter J. Amdam), Aphex Twin (by Francesco Tenaglia), and Torey Thornton (by Ross Simonini).
To follow, our signature MAIN THEME section, titled SO NY, is dedicated to practices informed and inspired by the city of New York. From the gritty urban feeling to the great sense of community — living and working in NYC provides endless inspiration and fuel for artists and creators. We have selected four pairs, from different generations and circles, to share memories and discuss perspectives: Jeffrey Deitch and Fab 5 Freddy, Chris Martin and Joyce Pensato, Brendan Dugan and Ari Marcopoulos, and Cecilia Alemani and Marianne Vitale. The result is a choral tale of convergences, strategies, connections, and old and new magics. Enriched with a collectable poster by Ari Marcopoulos!
On the other hand, the MONO section and cover story are dedicated to Norwegian, Los Angeles-based photographer Torbjørn Rødland. Seemingly speaking the fetishistic idiom of advertisement, marketing and food photography, Rødland’s images are in fact pervaded by the most compelling kind of perversity and haunted by boredom, spiritual longing, and a sense of aftermath. This monographic survey comprises an essay by Chris Sharp, an interview by Hanne Mugaas, and original portraits by Trine Hisdal.
Later on, a brand new section invites the eye to an enthralling journey across over 80 pages of visual contributions by artists, curators and image-makers, affirming the magazine’s centrality as a tool to show and experience art. This issue’s VISIONS include “Chopped & Screwed: Austin Lee and David Benjamin Sherry,” curated by Alessio Ascari; H.R. Giger’s “Biomechanoid”; Dorothea Tanning’s “Paintings”; Alexandra Bachzetsis’s “From A to B via C”; “Rondes Bosses,” curated by Nicolas Trembley; Chris Wiley’s “Technical Compositions”; and David Rappeneau’s “$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.”
Lastly, the closing section of REGULARS features our insightful columns on the past, present and future of art and culture: in the first installment of Futura 89+ Hans Ulrich Obrist and Simon Castets interview American poet Andrew Durbin; Producers features Carson Chan’s conversation with Artsy’s founder Carter Cleveland; Christopher Schreck explores Francesco Clemente’s India as part of the Panorama series; and in Pioneers Fredi Fischli and Niels Olsen talk to legendary artist Ashley Bickerton.
2008, Japanese/English
Softcover, 108 pages (b/w ill.), 21 x 16.7 cm
Published by
Akaaka / Tokyo
$60.00 - Out of stock
Jiro Takamatsu is one of the main figures of the Japanese avant-garde of the 1960s onward, having participated in the seminal artists’ collective High Red Center (1963-64) and approached the Mono-Ha movement (1967–1979). The “photographs of photographs,” shown in the 1973 edition of the Bienal de São Paulo, were made in collaboration with a professional photographer based on photos from the artist’s personal, family archive. The procedure plays with photography’s temporal dimension and with memory, while also relating the images with other scenes and “real” objects: a hand, a ruler, a work shelf, a doorstop.
1991, Japanese/English
Softcover, 175 pages (colour & b/w ill.), 29.9 x 21 cm
1st edition, Out of print title / As New,
Published by
National Museum of Modern Art / Kyoto
$60.00 - Out of stock
Catalogue from the 1991 exhibition at the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Japan
Yasuzo Nojima (1889 – 1964) is well known for his contributions to both Japanese and world photography as an artist and publisher. He was instrumental in raising photography’s status as a fine art in Japan in the 1930s. He published the periodical Koga in 1932. The magazine was the first devoted to modern photography in Japan and the first to present Japanese photographers to the rest of the world.
Nojima introduced a new photographic aesthetic to Japan, one that concentrated on the technical and aesthetic qualities of photography in its own right rather than as an imitation of paintings. Nojima’s early works, which were gum-dichromate prints, had a soft focus with a pictorial vision. His later still lifes and nudes, though still soft, were striking in their simple and direct forms.
1999, Japanese/English
Softcover, 136 pages (colour & b/w ill.), 29.2 x 24.1cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / Used*,
Published by
National Museum of Modern Art / Tokyo
$105.00 - Out of stock
Kiyoji Ohtsuji (Otsuji) played a critical role in post-war Japanese avant-garde photography. His documentation in the 1950s of groups such as Experimental Workshop, an interdisciplinary artistic movement of which he was a member, covered everything from stage design to rehearsal sessions to final performances, providing intimate records of their ephemeral choreographed stagings. A renowned photographer, professor and critical writer, Ohtsuji profoundly influenced subsequent generations of Japanese photographers through his analysis of photography as a medium
2011, Japanese/English
Hardcover in slipcase, 308 pages (colour & bw ill.), 20 x 27 cm
Published by
Kokushokankokai / Tokyo
$90.00 - Out of stock
This book is published in conjunction with the exhibition ‘Moholy-Nagy/In Motion’ introducing works spanning the full oeuvre of Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946), an artist who brought new vision to the art of the 20th century. As a prominent member of the avant-garde art movements between the two World Wars, he developed an artistic ideal of creating works of light and motion. The pursuit of his career as a creative artist and art educator took Moholy-Nagy from his native Hungary to Vienna, then on to Germany, the Netherlands and Great Britain and finally to the United States. Working in painting, photography, sculpture, film, graphic design, stage design and publishing, Moholy-Nagy’s career addressed many of the new issues confronting art in the 20th century, such as the relationship between art and industrial technology and the new media of information and communications. This exhibition marks Japan’s first full-scale retrospective of the art of Moholy-Nagy and spans the artist’s full career from its earliest years to its last in some 300 works and related materials and documents.
2007, English
Softcover, 212 pages, 24 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / Used*,
Published by
Magnum Photos / Paris
$75.00 - Out of stock
In this beautifully produced third issue of the international art/fashion collectible Fashion Magazine, the acclaimed American photographer Alec Soth plays Editor-in-Chief, Advertising Director and sole photographic contributor--to quietly mesmerizing results. Featuring exquisite printing, unexpected gatefolds, special inks, varnishes and paper changes, this magazine-as-artist's-book-as-sociological-study-as-tongue-in-cheek-(yet-also-very-real)-advertising-vehicle contains some of the most riveting work being produced by a young photographer today. Soth explains: "While Fashion Magazine has a single photographer-author, it's still a magazine, not a book. So it doesn't follow my usual mode of slow, solitary production. It's collaboration. The ideas for the collaboration were formulated very quickly. I was approached by the folks at the Paris office of Magnum to work on this issue late last year. I immediately said yes. I was a huge fan of the previous two editions (by Martin Parr and Bruce Gilden) and was looking for an excuse to play with fashion . I often say that when I am making a portrait, I'm not 'capturing' the other person. If the photograph documents anything, it is the space between the subject and myself. Something similar is at work with Fashion Magazine. I'm not really comfortable saying I know anything about Paris or its fashion world. And I suspect that most fashionable Parisians know just as little about Minnesota. What is interesting is the space between us. My favorite example of this involves Chanel. In Paris, I photographed Karl Lagerfeld at the Grand Palais. In Minnesota, I photographed a girl with a Chanel shopping bag in front of Sally's Beauty Shop. With this magazine, I'm trying to explore the distance between those two places."
Photographer Alec Soth was born in 1969 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he continues to live and work. He is the recipient of major fellowships from the McKnight and Jerome Foundations, and was awarded the 2003 Santa Fe Prize for Photography. His photographs are represented in major public collections including The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Museum of Fine Arts Houston and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and have been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions worldwide. Soth's widely acclaimed first monograph, Sleeping by the Mississippi, was published in 2004, followed by Niagara and Dog Days Bogotá in 2006 and 2007 respectively. Soth is represented by Gagosian Gallery in New York and Weinstein Gallery in Minneapolis. He is an associate photographer with Magnum Photos.
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.
1999, English
Softcover, 272 pages, 21.3 x 28 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / Used*,
Published by
Illinois State University University Galleries / Illinois
$250.00 - Out of stock
Dismal Science is the definitive edition of seven acclaimed photographic projects made by Allan Sekula over the last 24 years, and also includes a number of critical essays by Sekula on contemporary photography.
His hybrid works, incorporating photographic sequences, slide projections, texts, and audio recordings, question the conventions of documentary photography, while tracing strange linkages between everyday life and the global economic system.
Dismal Science is published in conjunction with an exhibition organized by the University Galleries of Illinois State University that travelled to eight venues between 1996-1998 including the Netherlands foto institute, Rotterdam, the Munich Kunstverein, and the John Curtin Gallery, Perth, Australia.