ILIT AZOULAY

Finally Without End

Orit Bulgaru (Ed.)

Concerned with the scraps and remains of the everyday from architectural debris to spools of thread, Israeli artist, Ilit Azoulay’s meticulously composed photographs capture the ambiguity of objects detached from their original purpose. Created during a five-month residency at the KW Institute for Contempory Art, Berlin, the sumptuous monograph features work from her recent series Implicit Manifestations, in which architectural fragments she collected from ten cities were collaged into site-specific installations. Several essays discuss her practice. Sarit Shapira describes the artist’s 2008 series Unknown Aspects; Michal Ben-Naftali offers a psychoanalytic reading of Azoulay’s uncanny images; Shalom Shpilman explores the theme of viewer participation; and show curators Aya Lurie and Gabriele Horn meditate on two concurrent exhibitions of Azoulay’s photographs as events-in-progress—forever unfolding and forestalling conclusion.

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KNUT ÅSDAM

The Long Gaze, The Short Gaze

In a companion book to the challenging exhibition at Bergen Kunsthalle, viewers experience the latest work of Norwegian artist Knut Åsdam, one of Europe’s central contemporary practitioners of film, video art and installation. This publication brings together a collection of new commissioned texts on the projects in the exhibition: Åsdam’s new films, Abyss and Tripoli (both 2010), and a new installation work based on the artist’s own archive of found photo material. Exploring once again themes of transformation and relocation, borders and boundaries, inside and outside, Asdam confronts issues like the migration of people between land areas, or physical movement and the bodily experience of architecture in urban surroundings.

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SILVIA B.

Of Beauty and Doubt

The meticulously crafted sculptures of Dutch artist Silvia B. (b. 1963) lure the viewer to come and take a closer look. But a disquieting aesthetic soon becomes apparent: these figures are hybrid beings between man and beast, doll and robot, confusing gender and age. This expansive survey documents nearly 25 years of her work including drawings and photographs in addition to her iconic sculptures. As a multidisciplinary thinker, Silvia B. took on the design of her book along with the concept, photography and the editing. With her roots in fashion, she chose a magazine look enriched with glossy pages and luxurious illustrations. In this lush catalog, each series of work is featured on its own selection of paper, alternated by essays from contributors including Dutch novelist Marcel Möring, Dutch art critic Jaap Röell, Belgian art critic Anne-Marie Poels and writer Werner van den Belt.

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BAD BONN SONG BOOK

Patrick Boschung, Daniel Fontana, Adeline Mollard & Katharina Reidy (Eds.)

Another great pop culture document from Patrick Frey! For two and a half years, artists performing at the Bad Bonn, a popular music venue in Fribourg, Switzerland, were asked to put their songs on paper. The result is an eccentric encyclopedic diary created by the artists themselves, documenting the music they played at the fair during those years. The bands represent an array of music styles from metal, anti-folk and country to electronica, indie and hip-hop. The alphabetically organized facsimile reproductions of their handwritten lyrics, scores and doodles opens a window into the psyches of musicians and songwriters. Celebrating Bad Bonn’s 25th anniversary, this oversized, somewhat floppy soft-cover publication rests comfortably in the lap to allow a thorough perusal of a facet of musicians’ creativity not visible on stage or in recordings. Songbook is an unusual publication and source book, with broad appeal not only to the music world but the worlds of art, design and popular culture.

Includes work by: Black Angeles, Deerhoof, The Flaming Lips, Future Islands, Goat, Mogwai, Panda Bear,Sebadoh, Unknow Mortal Orchestra, Wire and many more.

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DAVE HULLFISH BAILEY AND SAM WATSON

CityCat Project, 2006–2016

Rex Butler (Ed.)

CityCat Project 2006–2016 documents the extraordinary 10-year collaboration between California artist Dave Hullfish Bailey (b. 1963) and senior Aboriginal writer and activist Sam Watson (b. 1952). Structured around the Maiwar Performance, for which CityCat ferries on the Brisbane River execute unannounced maneuvers near a 19th-century Aboriginal site, the performance has been restaged over the years as an act of indigenous empowerment. The subject of this slender publication is an evolving body of playful, yet politically and intellectually resistant works in diverse media reflecting the call-and-response collaboration between Watson and Bailey. CityCat Project curator David Pestorius contributes an essay and detailed timeline on the activities of Bailey and Watson before and throughout their collaboration. Art historian Sally Butler reflects upon Watson’s literary production and curator Michele Helmrich sheds light on the local historical context that significantly informs the collaboration. Two past publications by Dave Bailey include What’s Left (Sternberg Press, 2009) and Union Pacific (1999), both distributed by RAM.

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DARJA BAJAGIC

Unlimited Hate

Sandro Droschl (Ed.)

For her first solo museum exhibition, New York–based emerging artist Darja Bajagic (b. 1990) turns to the murky terrain where real and staged violence bleed into each other with an ease that is both unsettling and alluring. Published on the occasion of her 2016 show, this slender softcover catalog, Unlimited Hate, presents a practice that spans painting, photography, collage, video and installation in full-color illustrations with texts by curators Alissa Bennett, Franklin Melendez and Natalia Sielewicz. Following the lure of the fringes, the artist culls her imagery from fan-gore magazines, true-crime TV shows, fetish websites, obscure online forums and hidden chat rooms tucked away in the darker reaches of the Web. She handles these disparate source materials with a dose of humor, working them into densely layered compositions that are at once confrontational and poetically fragile. Bajagic explores loaded questions of embodiment, viewership and power relations, all the while interrogating our need to hold images accountable.

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PEDRO BAKKER

Innocent

If behind every door there lies a story, Dutch artist Pedro Bakker’s (b. 1952) second artist book with Onomatopee—part drawing, part writing—opens many doors. Innocent is a hybrid of autobiography and cultural-political quest in which the artist illustrates the various tensions among love, power and powerlessness. Product of an eight-month residency in China sponsored by the Dutch embassy and the Mondriaan Fund, Bakker’s colorful images narrate a blend of personal and fictional stories. Writings are sometimes paired with images, and sometimes inserted to separate groups of drawings creating chapters. Through his figurative reflections on human relationships, political relations and his own life, the artist interrogates our involvement in questions of guilt and innocence, all the while allowing the line demarcating the two to remain tremulous. In image and word, the book layout captures the diverse voices and rhythms populating Bakker’s vision. Contributions by Pedro Bakker, Hanne Hagenaars, Jelle Bouwhuis, Freek Lomme, Laurens ten Kate and Rollergirl.

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BALANCHINE TEACHING

In 1961, Nancy Lassalle, long-time ballet patron and associate of Lincoln Kirstein, co-founder of the New York City Ballet, was given permission to photograph a two-day teacher seminar led by George Balanchine at the School of American Ballet in New York City. The nonprofit workshop was intended to elevate the level of ballet education across the United States by inviting teachers from around the country to learn directly from the master of dance. Published for the first time in this slender but exquisitely designed and printed softcover catalog are 14 of Lassalle’s duotone photographs capturing Balanchine demonstrating various ballet positions, his command of the art and his desire to share that knowledge. The intimate images offer a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse of a pivotal moment in the history of American dance. Comments under each image along with a detailed essay by Suki Schorer reveal her deep knowledge of Balanchine’s teaching and working years.

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Miroslaw Balka

Lichtzwang

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STEPHAN BALKENHOL

Deichtorhallen Hamburg

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