LOGICAL EMOTION

Contemporary Art from Japan

Sabine Schaschl (Ed.)

The singularly “Japanese” handling of the opposites—logic and emotion—is the focus of this thought-provoking exhibition catalog documenting Switzerland’s first major group exhibition of contemporary Japanese art. Ranging from the rational to the sensual, work by 13 artists, both recognized and emerging, define what it means to “be” Japanese through installations, architecture, 3D sculpture, ceramics, graphic design, manga-inspired painting and more. Artists featured are Noe Aoki and Teppei Kaneuji, Koji Enokura, Kazunari Hattori, Akihisa Hirata, Ryogi Ikeda, Masayasu Mitsuke, Tatsuo Miyajima, Go Watanabe, Taiji Matsue, Hiroshi Sujito, Yuichi Yokoyama along with internationally renowned artist Yayoi Kusama. With insightful essays by curators Sabine Schaschl (Museum Haus Konstrucktiv, Zurich) and Kenjiro Hosaka (National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo) along with art critic Minoru Shimizu.

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RICHARD LONG

A Reader

Clarrie Wallis (Ed.)

Charting Richard Long’s critical reception, this well-illustrated anthology of writings deftly discloses the sculptor’s radical rethinking of the relationship between art and landscape. Widely considered one of the most influential British minimalist artists of his generation, Long (b. 1945) has maintained a practice that stems from his deep love of nature and solitary walking. He first came to prominence in the late 1960s and is part of a generation of international artists that extended the possibilities of sculpture beyond traditional materials and methods. This comprehensive volume includes over 30 essays and reviews on the artist from the late 1960s to the present, drawn together here for the first time. The texts are accompanied by key interviews, a selection of the artist’s own statements, and an introductory essay by editor Clarrie Wallis (curator of Modern and Contemporary British Art at Tate, London) that examines Long’s unique position within postwar art history.

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SERGE ONNEN

The Lost Cent

This graphic novel relates a day in the life of a lucky penny. Celebrated Franco-Dutch illustrator Serge Onnen conceived of this project as a commentary on the transitory nature of value.“ All things of value are defenseless,” reads Lucebert’s famous poem. That line, immortalized in a public neon sculpture in Rotterdam, formed Onnen’s inspiration. But what if a defenseless being is worthless, he asks? With less face value than its production cost, it could be the perfect object to raise questions about value. A homeless coin becomes problematic and unwanted, traveling through a series of rust-hued ink drawings, echoing the missing hole in the center of each page where the missing coin should be. Featuring texts from Olav Velthuis and Charles Baudelaire.

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LOUISE MENZIES

Pursuit of an Ideal

An holistic amalgam of spirituality and physical health, the School of Radiant Living was founded in New Zealand by the English psychologist Herbert Sutcliffe and flourished in that country from the 1930s through the 1980s. New Zealand artist Louise Menzies has investigated this optimistic, mid-century movement through several installations, a film, and now this rich artist’s book. Bringing together a wealth of ephemera on the School of Radiant Living, she imaginatively re-configures her materials to draw out broader tensions between the individual and the collective, the practical and the ideal, the nostalgic and the utopian visions. Including a poster insert and pamphlet, this perceptive publication re-introduces us to an idealistic past.

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Lea Lublin

A Retrospective

Stephanie Weber (Ed.)

In 1968, the Paris-based Argentinian conceptual artist Lea Lublin exhibited herself with her eight-month-old son in a Paris gallery (Yvon Lambert) for three weeks in what was considered a scandalous exhibition. The title, The Striptease of Jesus as a Child, was a conversation with the public on the subliminal eroticism in Christian paintings. Relatively unknown to an international audience until now, Lublin was part of a generation of feminist artists such as Judy Chicago and Hannah Wilke fiercely committed to overcoming the boundaries separating art and life. This profusely illustrated and comprehensive catalog of her sensual, challenging and didactic work spans three decades of photographs, drawings, wall installations and videos, and includes documentation of a reconstruction of one of her most ambitious works, Fluvio Subtunal (1969), as well as off-site public interventions. Featuring contributions by Monika Bayer-Wermuth, Thibault Boulvain, Catherine Francblin, Isabel Plante, Teresa Riccardi and Stephanie Weber, plus translations of Lea Lublin’s writings and a key text on Lublin by Pierre Restan from 1969.

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SARAH LUCAS

FunQroc

British artist and member of the “YBA generation,” Sarah Lucas (b. 1962) is known for the visual puns and bawdy humor of her irreverent artworks and installations. For her sixth exhibition and publication at Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin (2017), Lucas staged a four-day communal happening on Easter weekend she referred to as a “work in progress.” Lucas’s new exhibition, FunQroc, invited visitors to participate in a happening in which foot washings were offered by the artist on Holy Thursday, an afternoon concert on Good Friday and an action-painting-happening, 1000 Eggs, encouraging women to throw eggs at a gallery wall on Saturday. On Easter Sunday, poetry readings, music and visual works, plus a finale featuring an action painting for men titled Ejaculation ended the weekend event. This unassuming slender exhibition catalog opens up to 100 vivid color plates documenting every aspect of this wild and free-flowing event. At a time when art is usually so calm, this chaotic document is a breath of fresh air!

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ARMANDO LULAJ

Albanian Trilogy: A Series of Devious Stratagems

Marco Scotini (Ed.)

Albanian playwright and film artist Armando Lulaj’s (b. 1980) project for the 56th Venice Biennale Albanian Pavilion is a time capsule of the country’s past treading the line between fact and fiction. Combining evocation and documentation, Lulaj conveys the historical-political phase during which Albania built its inter- national identity with archival materials, three videos and an enormous whale’s skeleton—both protagonist and silent witness—representing the Hobbesian principle of sovereignty. Complementing the exhibition, the compact hardcover catalog-reader includes essays by curator Marco Scotini, historian Elidor Mehilli, NYU critic and philosopher Boris Groys and theorist Jonida Gashi. Film stills and original and archival photographs ruminate on communism’s mechanisms of power and socializing myths through the lens of Albania’s geopolitical situation. A conversation between Hou Hanru and Lulaj, along with Edi Muki’s reading of the trilogy, focuses on the cross-disciplinary methods of historical reconstruction located between the role of artist and social archaeologist.

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MARKO LULIC

I was the Cleaning Lady at the Bauhaus

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LUNA LUNA IN THE SKY.

Will You Make Me Laugh or Cry?

Steven Hull

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Markus Lüpertz

At last, a comprehensive catalog – almost a catalogue raisonné – of the work of painter Markus Lüpertz, a treasure of the German art world for almost 50 years. Considered a peer of Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, and Georg Baselitz, Lupertz has never believed in the purely representational purpose of art; instead, in his own words, he has always been “searching for the potential picture,” and thus never felt bound by any one style. An inspiration for younger artists such as Peter Doig, Tal R and Thomas Houseago, Lupertz has freely created works from a vast fund of artistic and historic-cultural material, devising coded paintings that bear his emphatic signature. This catalog, accompanying an important retrospective, stretches back to works fro the 1960s and includes an extensive section of photographic documentation.

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