FLAKA HALITI

Speculating on the Blue
Kosovo Pavilion, 56th Venice Biennale

Nicolaus Schafhausen (Ed.)

For the Kosovo Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale, artist Flaka Haliti created the installation Speculating on the Blue, reflecting on the meaning of borders, democracy, freedom and mobility. The skeletons of barrier-like objects in the space are a reference to the aesthetics of the concrete walls that are erected between nations as a materialization of conflict. Haliti’s installation aims at demilitarizing and decontextualizing this specific aesthetic practice by stripping the columns down to their material essence and juxtaposing them with elements that are by nature resistant to the concept of borders. In this scenario, the horizon and the blue pictorial ground, which directly references the blue-painted barriers in front of the Kosovo UN, create a counter image to the concept of borders as a tool to raise new perspectives. In addition is an artist’s conversation with Markus Miessen and an essay by curator Vanessa Joan Müller.

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HALKA/HAITI

18°48’05”N 72°23’01”W

C. T. Jasper & Joanna Malinowska

Inspired and provoked by Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo, two artists and a curator decide to revisit his mad plan of bringing opera to the tropics. In an attempt to undercut Fitzcarraldo’s colonial romanticism, they confront a set of particular historical and socio-political realities by staging Halka, considered to be Poland’s “national opera,” in the seemingly unlikely locale of Cazale, Haiti, a village inhabited by the descendants of Polish soldiers who fought for the Haitian Revolution in the early 1800s.

In February 2015, a one-time-only performance of Halka was presented to a rapt local audience on a winding dirt road. A collaboration between Polish and Haitian performers, the event was filmed in one take to be presented later as a large-scale projected panorama in the Polish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

This volume provides both a multifaceted conceptual framework for the project and a detailed record of this remarkable endeavor.

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Frank Halmans

Here I Hier

An extensive, full-color monograph for Dutch artist Frank Halmans, whose found-object sculptures and installations comment profoundly on human aspirations, walking the line between witty and poignant. “Frank Halmans tries to get a grip on time, to hold on to his own history,” writes Tom van den Berge in the foreword. “His work calls forth the need to contemplate, to think about our own place in the world.” He’s particularly good with books, organized by color, defaced with exquisite little cut-outs, stacked on irrelevant shelves. This oversized volume includes the artist’s detailed drawings and extensive photos of Halmans’ dollhouse-influenced sculptures, odd hybrids (a Dustbuster shaped like a house, anybody?), scary stuffed closets and public art installations.

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LAWRENCE ABU HAMDAN

[inaudible]: A Politics of Listening in 4 Acts

Fabian Schöneich (Ed.)

In both art and research, Beirut- and London-based artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan (b. 1985) explores the perception of language and sound. His latest project, A Politics of Listening, is an intervention into and reorganization of the forms listening takes. His latest artist book provides a glimpse into an elaborate and productive career that began with Hamdan’s interest in DIY music and includes audiovisual installations, performances, graphic works, photography, Islamic sermons, cassette tape compositions, essays and lectures. The slender publication, accompanying two recent shows, features transcriptions of sermons, monologues, testimonies and interviews made over the last five years engaging questions of national identity, human rights and the administration of justice. Hamdan’s audio-aesthetic practice includes sonic forensics for legal investigations and advocacy. Hamdan is a current fellow at Vera List Center for Art and Politics, the New School, NY , and his work is collected by MoMA, NY , Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Barjeel Art Foundation, UAE, among others. Essays by Omar Kholeif and Fabian Schoneich.

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HANS VAN HOUWELINGEN

Undone

Mihnea Mircan

In a profound and sly commentary on how we create history, Dutch artist Hans van Houwelingen proposes switching the places of two important historical statues in the Netherlands. The artist suggests that the Amsterdam statue of the first prime minister of the Netherlands, Johan Rudolph Thorbecke, should be in The Hague – the administrative seat of the country’s government – and that a statue of Dutch Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza should be in Thorbecke’s spot in Amsterdam, the center of Dutch culture and arts. Correcting the historical inaccuracy in their placement could trigger a crucial re-evaluation of the politician’s and the philosopher’s legacies in relation to today’s political and moral unrest. Hans van Houwelingen shares his critical viewpoint on art in public spaces along with compelling essays by Brian Dillion, editor of Cabinet magazine, Julia Bryan-Wilson, art historian at UC Berkeley, Mark Jarzombek, Professor of the History and Theory and Associate Dean at MIT’s School of Architecture, along with many more.

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Hansjörg Dobliar

The Delicate Deformation

Hansjörg Dobliar’s captivating collages present new and unexpected pictorial content as the artist transforms other media with original verve. In this beautifully produced volume, viewers see Dobliar’s acrylic or lacquer treatment of templates from vintage issues of Italian magazines Epoca and Oggi – the Us magazines of their day. The young artist, who divides his time between Berlin and Munich, invites us into the Valley of the Dolls to admire large-format portraits of Sharon Tate that oscillate between reality and fiction, the recognizable and the unrecognizable. Dobliar is a provocateur who is willing to admit that Tate, once the wife of Roman Polanski, owes her iconic status to her gruesome murder at the hands of the Manson Family, an event that heralded the hippie movement’s loss of innocence.

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DON ED HARDY

Tattooing The Invisible Man

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IRVING HARPER

Paper Sculptures

Richard Wright & Paul Makovsky

American industrial designer Irving Harper (1916–2015) has been lauded as one of the most prolific designers of the modernist style. Harper lived in Rye, New York, in a 19th-century farmhouse filled with modernist furnishings and over 300 paper sculptures. Working in his attic, Harper created extensive groups of his paper sculptures with a dizzying array of visual motifs. His mastery of the delicate material gave way to the execution of a seemingly limitless stream of objects: ranging from tribal and oceanic art to cubism and his beloved tree in the garden. These extraordinary, idiosyncratic and diverse sculptures have been restored, cataloged and beautifully photographed in their entirety for the first time. Irving Harper: Paper Sculptures is a thoughtfully designed publication devoted to presenting a little known chapter in the creative life of one of modern design’s most important protagonists. Includes 348 images—almost all in full color! Contributions by Irving Harper, George Nelson & Associates, Richard Wright and Paul Makovsky.

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HASSAN KHAN

The Agreement: Five Stories

Five short stories in this new exhibition catalog by artist, writer, and musician Hassan Khan explore the margins at which a vernacular, be it linguistic or formal, attains its stature. Kahn engages the reader with very particular yet uncannily recognizable characters and occurrences. Published to accompany Kahn’s exhibition at Objectif Exhibitions in Antwerp, the stories are filtered through a specific cultural, aesthetic, and personal sensibility, accompanied by images of specifically produced sculptural objects, and based on the demotic style of popular kitsch ornaments. Through a series of narrative portraits and accompanying images of his recent sculptures, Khan’s seemingly ubiquitous tales are in fact an attempt to let a story tell itself.

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EBERHARD HAVEKOST

Inhalt

Andreas Fiedler (Ed.)

What do we actually see? How much reality is contained in the surface and depiction of things? Where do content (inhalt) and meaning exist? And how is it shaped into something different? Inhalt presents contemporary German painter Eberhard Havekost’s (b. 1967, Dresden) works during the last 10 years, focusing on the paintings he exhibited at KINDL – Centre for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2017). The complex interrelationship of the artist’s characteristically heterogenous works is conveyed in the layout of this slender fully illustrated hardcover survey catalog, which suggests a continuously expanding web. The starting points for Havekost’s paintings include his own photographs, advertisement and book illustrations, television, films and Internet images. As Havekost paints, he reflects on the function and role of pictures as well as their authenticity in relationship to the deluge of digital images absorbed today. An essay by the Basel-based art historian Invar-Torre Hollaus compliments extensive illustrations.

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