I AM BUILT INSIDE YOU

Julia Grosse, Elke aus dem Moore & Yvette Mutumba (Eds.)

Over the past four years, the art magazine Contemporary And (C&) has called attention to exhibitions, artists and curators from diverse African perspectives while boosting new areas of debate. I am built inside you, C&’s first publication, is a compilation of 18 pieces published since the magazine was launched in 2013. The point of departure is a conversation with the great South African artist Helen Sebidi that took place on the occasion of the 32nd São Paulo Biennial in 2016. The volume collects significant pieces from the C& archive that expand upon and contextualize Sebidi’s concepts of home, history and spirituality. Included as well are 27 diverse contributions such as interviews with emerging South African artist Tabita Rezaire; Senga Nengudi, artist and core member of the African-American avant-garde in 1970s and ’80s Los Angeles; Thelma Golden, legendary director of the Studio Museum in Harlem; and trailblazing academic Walter Mignolo.

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I HATE PAUL KLEE

Works on Paper and Artists’ Books from the Speck Collection

Renate Goldmann

An extensive catalog from the unique and extraordinary collection of works on paper assembled over more than forty years by the Cologne-based physician Reiner Speck. The artists’ names gathered here form a veritable who’s who of modern and contemporary art history, exploring the relationship between word and image. Cy Twombly’s works on paper are spectacular and dense, despite their small formats; works by Sigmar Polke, Bruce Nauman, Gunther Forg, Martin Kippenberger and others create a brilliantly assembled grouping. Speck contributes an essay on his collection, as do several scholars and curators, notably Renate Goldmann. A beautifully edited and crisply produced monograph on one of the most personal collections of our time.

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IDEAS AND THOUGHTS

Helmut Smits

Freek Lomme (Ed.)

Helmut Smits is a constant observer. His work, which moves across widely varying media from installation to sculpture to photography to drawing, playfully employs visual puns and witty observations to ultimately make a poetic statement about the everyday. In this volume of the Dutch artist’s drawings, the follow-up to his first book 123 Ideas (2008), Smits shares with readers his notebook of sketches and scribbles in a remarkably unmediated way. Ideas and Thoughts offers a window into the creative process and proves that, sometimes, the simplest ideas are the most profound. This new publication comes on the heels of Smits’ first US solo exhibition at Beginnings Gallery, New York. The artist is the recipient of the Absolut Talent Award (2009) and the Longlist Prix de Rome (2009).

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LEIKO IKEMURA

Ceramic Sculptures and Related Works

Yoko Mori, Keisuke Mori & Yuriko Takimoto (Eds.)

The first monograph published in Japan on Leiko Ikemura, Ceramic Sculptures and Related Works traces the artist’s path from the 1980s to her latest works in the solo exhibition, Leiko Ikemura: PIOON at the Vangi Sculpture Garden Museum. Over one hundred photographs, many of which are of installations, show the relationship between her sculptures and paintings. Since leaving Japan in 1972 and basing herself in Europe, Leiko Ikemura has worked in a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, and drawing, in her ongoing exploration of the fundamental meaning of human existence. As well as featuring for the first time several poetic black-and-white photographs taken by the artist of her own sculptural pieces, the comprehensive text includes discussions of Ikemura’s work by visual culture scholar Elisabeth Bronfen, art critics Donald Kuspit and Midori Matsui and Vangi Sculpture Garden Museum curator Keisuke Mori along with poets Elisabeth Plessen and Koichi Tanokura.

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IMAGES OF FARMING

Wapke Feenstra and Antje Schiffers / myvillages.org

In the 21st century, few topics evoke so many different notions and passions as farmers and agriculture – whether people are arguing about genetically modified crops or blissfully shopping at their local farmers market. This book, the product of myvillages.org, an international artist co-operative based in The Netherlands, focuses on connecting rural and urban through wide-ranging art projects honoring traditional agricultural cultures and arts. Founding artists Kathrin Böhm, Wapke Feenstraand and Antje Schiffers ) all come from small, agricultural villages, and their goal is to preserve this essential human heritage through art. An engrossing journey through the production of farming-related images as the expression of several themes: culture and myth formation, publicity and the sciences, cultural heritage, and the fine arts.

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Imran Qureshi

Side by Side

Side by Side takes the form of 2 books: a connect-the-dots book and a religious instruction manual. In the connect-the-dots book, called The True Path, the reader is invited to connect numbered dots on a complex 82-page, concertina-fold pull-out that reaches more than 25 feet long. The dots, found among exquisitely drawn pictorial elements that recall 18th-century miniature paintings, eventually map out forms such as rockets and missiles. The accompanying book resembles the religious instruction manuals distributed in Pakistan to promote the government’s “Moderate Enlightenment” policy, with the artist’s Mughal-style paintings of contemporary everyday people. Qureshi adapts a commonplace form of printed matter and a traditionally valued art practice to reflect upon the complexities of contemporary society and politics in Pakistan.

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IN THE HOLOCENE

João Ribas (Ed.)

Co-published with MIT List Visual Arts Center, this substantial exhibition catalog explores art as speculative science. Work investigating entropy, matter, time, energy, topology, mimicry, perception and consciousness is illustrated in texts and images by a large intergenerational group of artists, historians and theoreticians. Sometimes employing scientific methodologies, other times investigating phenomena not restricted to any scientific discipline, this publication suggests that art, like science, can be seen as a form of research and inquiry into the physical and natural world. In expanding both artistic and scientific speculation, In the Holocene seeks to shift our understanding of aesthetics away from conventional ideas of pleasure, beauty and taste by drawing on the history of speculative propositions and work by contemporary artists. Over 50 artists and writers are featured with images and texts such as Roget Callois and Berenice Abbot, John Baldessari and Lucy Lippard, Friedrich Froebel and Germaine Kruip, Alfred Jarry and Sol LeWitt, John McCracken and Paul Valery.

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INCREDIBLY HOT SEX WITH HIDEOUS PEOPLE

The Book of the Zine

Bryce Galloway and Friends

With the greatest title ever – which has nothing to do with the book’s content – this is a greatest-hits collection from New Zealand artist/musician Bryce Galloway’s awesome, rough-edged fanzine. Over a decade of publishing, the zine served as Galloway’s personal graphic diary along with many of his very funny friends, chronicling his journey (and his horror thereof) from slacker, to adult art student, to father and homeowner. New Zealand’s progressive alternative music scene intersects in so many ways with the country’s contemporary art community. Resembling early blogs or the beginnings of Facebook, this engrossing book shows how the younger generation began to communicate in an underground, non-branded modality.

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INDIVIDUAL STORIES

Collecting as Portrait and Methodology

Luca Lo Pinto, Nicolaus Schafhausen & Anne-Claire Schmitz (Eds.)

Individual Stories is a refreshing and playful illustrated account of the collections belonging to 20 international contemporary artists featured in the Kunsthal Wein 2015 exhibition. Beginning with a visual collage by photo-based artist Marie Angeletti blending the artists’ objects, views of the exhibition, museum visitors and the community, this well-edited and -designed catalog portrays the rich relationship of artists to their personal collections. Color and black-and-white photographs accompanying essays and interviews with each featured artist provide a snapshot of the collection as both personal portrait and artistic method. Some of the collections have been incorporated into artworks, like John Stezaker’s; others remain separate, like Thomas Bayrle’s; and in the case of Hans Peter Feldman’s, the act of collecting is the work of art. Contributing essays by Pinto, Schafhausen and Schmitz complement this fascinating glimpse into how artists collect and how the actual objects and areas of intrigue and interest inspire and influence their art. Featured artists include Saâdane Afif, Jacques André, Marie Angeletti, Thomas Bayrle, Barbara Bloom, Herbert Brandl, Andrea Büttner, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Camille Henrot, Michaela Maria Langenstein, Pierre Leguillon, Hanne Lippard, Maurizio Nannucci, G. T. Pellizzi, Max Renkel, Michael Riedel, Hubert Scheibl, Yann Sérandour, John Stezaker and Johannes Wohnseifer.

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INEZ VAN LAMSWEERDE & VINOODH MATADIN

‘Pretty Much Everything’ 1985–2010: 25 Photographs +
25 Posters with M/M (Paris)

Twenty-five years is a long time to stay ultra-hot, but this unique catalog for the fashion photography partnership of Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, accompanying their quarter-century retrospective at FOAM, the hip new photo museum in Amsterdam, proves it can be done. The photographers’ long-time collaborators, M/M (Paris), designed the catalog as a “newspaper” of sorts: M/M chose the 25 most influential photographs to represent the vast body of work, and printed them on poster-sized newsprint. On the reverse sides are 25 graphic posters designed by M/M using the photographers’ celebrity portraits (including Natalie Portman, Daniel Day Lewis and Mickey Rourke), creating an unbound “book” of sexy, dynamic posters folded together. Includes an essay by art critic Michael Bracewell.

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