FIONA TAN

VOX POPULI: Switzerland

Globe-spanning artist Fiona Tan presents the fourth publication in her continually surprising Vox Populi series: a “snapshot” of Switzerland selected from a random collection of family photo albums. These intimate, private pictures, when presented as a collection, reveal shared intimacies and humor, and shared Swiss traditions such as Christmas holidays and dining tables laden with elaborate cakes and pastries. These may appear, at first glance, culturally specific, but when seen in the context of the whole Vox Populi project, shared and comparable traditions clearly cross borders, nations and cultures. Drawing on the documentary tradition, this book gives an intensely private peek into the psyche of a nation.

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FIONA TAN

VOX POPULI: London

Indonesian-born artist Fiona Tan has been commissioned to make London the focus of the fifth and final installment of her Vox Populi series. Following her work in Norway, Sydney, Tokyo and Switzerland, Tan now uses the family photograph albums of Londoners. By lending their albums, the contributors confer onto the artist the unique access to domestic imagery ranging from the celebratory to the mundane. Intuitively themed by Tan, the work presents an intimate and collective image of London, calling into question the notion of self-representation and the consumption of those representations of one another. Also featured is a text by Brian Dillon, editor of Cabinet.

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FIONA TAN

Ascent

Yoko Mori & Yuri Yamada (Eds.)

Mt. Fuji is the focus of renowned international visual artist Fiona Tan’s (b. 1966) latest installation and site-specific work, Ascent, presented at the Izu Photo Museum, Japan (2016). The project is comprised of two visual parts—a 77-minute video installation and an extensive photographic installation of over 4,000 images either contributed by the public or selected from the archives of the Izu Photo Museum. The project is at once a rumination on the singularity of the mountain, man’s relationship to it, an exploration of history told through visual culture, and a study of the history of film. Conceived almost as an artist’s book project, the published record of the exhibition is divided into three small softcover catalogs housed in an elegant cardboard slipcase. The first book, filled with 100 color and black-and-white images, features both video outtakes and a fascinating selection of historical and contemporary images of Mt. Fuji. The two remaining books feature contributions by noted writer and curator David Campany, art historian Toshiharu Ito and cultural anthropologist Shinichi Takemura and Fiona Tan’s script for Ascent.

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FIONA TAN

VOX POPULI: Sydney

Fiona Tan

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KEIICHI TANAAMI & OLIVER PAYNE

Perfect Cherry Blossom

Perfect Cherry Blossom presents a unique and long-awaited collaboration between Los Angeles–based artist Oliver Payne (b. 1977, London) and Japanese leading postwar pop artist Keiichi Tanaami (b. 1936, Tokyo). For this oversize zine-like publication, Payne has reworked original drawings by Tanaami adding stickers featuring motifs and images from vintage violent Japanese arcade “bullet hell” games. Unlike most popular game genres that borrow from cinema and pop culture, these games are self-enclosed worlds concerned exclusively with their own complicated systems and rules. For legions of gamers, this beautiful, chaotic and psychedelic subgenre of “shoot ’em ups” is a cult classic in the world of hardcore arcade shooter games. For Payne, the driving force in these games are patterns of movement and behaviors that are mesmerizing in their complexity. This artists’ book also features an interview with Payne and Tanaami by Fredi Fischli and Niels Oslen discussing the origins of their collaboration.

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KOJI TANADA

Eleven Boys, One Girl

After working early in his career with contemporary materials like steel and resin, Japanese sculptor Koji Tanada turned to a material that underlined his cultural identity: wood, specifically mokucho, the traditional Japanese wood-carving technique that began with artisans making Buddhist figures in the pre-modern age. He was also fascinated by late-Gothic German carving. This book features his figures of children, remarkably touching and tender pieces, exquisitely detailed down to protruding ribs and single strands of hair. He then paints the surfaces in a proprietary combination of acrylics and floor wax, creating strangely realistic and individual figures. These works balance conceptual and concrete, innocence and maturity, vulgarity and holiness.

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ZIN TAYLOR

Growth

Canadian-born, Brussels-based artist Zin Taylor has become known internationally for his elaborate installations encompassing elements of performance and sculpture along with drawing, printing, and video. The multifaceted works in this artist book/exhibition catalog are often culled from the undergrowth of popular culture (especially the underground music scene) and contemporary art lore. The spoken and printed word in all its forms – journalism, research, storytelling – figures prominently in Taylor’s practice, and many of his installations have also been accompanied by publications and/or artist books. Contributing essays by Dan Adler, Esperanza Rosales, Dieter Roelstraete, Mark von Schlegell and Zin Taylor.

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ZIN TAYLOR

Lichen Voices | Stripes and Dots

Rosemary Heather & Nicolaus Schafhausen (Eds.)

This catalogue accompanies Taylor’s exhibition “The Story of Stripes and Dots (Chapter 5)” at Fogo Island Gallery, which follows his two-part residency with Fogo Island Arts in 2010 and 2012. Featuring essays by Zoë Gray and Saelan Twerdy, and Taylor in conversation with Patrick Staff and Robin Simpson, the book also presents the artist’s portfolio An Index Describing the Individual 19 Thoughts about Stripes and Dots Arranged on a Vitrine Made of Brass and Glass.

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Javier Téllez

4 1/2

An absorbing monograph on the first European solo exhibition for New York-based Venezuelan filmmaker, Javier Téllez, participant in two Venice Biennials (2001 and 2003) and the 2008 Whitney Biennial. Téllez’s work operates in the interface between fiction and documentary that developed through the auteur movement, to challenge Hollywood’s emphasis on story above all. Perhaps the most successful is his film La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc, in which he juxtaposes, in a dual projection, a reworking of the 1928 silent film of the same title with statements made by 12 psychiatric patients. The resulting film illustrates how easy it is to compare heroism with schizophrenia, asking where the line stands between “normal” and “abnormal”. Also featured is an interview by fellow artist Pedro Reyes, along with four additional essays.

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TECHNOLOGICAL RITUALS

Stories from the Annenberg Dialogues

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