SHAHRYAR NASHAT

Downscaled and Overthrown

The works of inventive young Swiss artist Shahryar Nashat pose questions about part of the museum experience that’s rarely considered – the display itself. Whether he’s using photography to focus on the plinth supporting an Renaissance sculpture (and chopping off the sculpture itself at ankle or knee), or incongruously pairing a stuntman-gymnast with Baroque frescoes in the Louvre, Nashat has plenty to say about painterly virtuosity, artistic patronage and the artificiality of art exhibitions. “The pedestal base plates … in which elegant and erotic rods of brass have been embedded themselves represent the object of desire,” writes curator Kathleen Rahn. This artist’s book based on Nashat’s first German solo exhibition includes video installations, sculpture, etchings and photographs.

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SHAHRYAR NASHAT

Obituary

The subject of this book is a prop—a dodecahedron, symbol of cosmic matter— painted the color green of cinematic trickery and special effects. It edged itself into Swiss artist Shahryar Nashat’s (b. 1975) work in 2011, first appearing in Factor Green, an installation at the Venice Biennale. A year later, the prop became known as La Shape, garnering critical acclaim for its sardonic personification of an unscrupulous impresario in two videos by Nashat. In Obituary, Nashat and LA-based curator-writer Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer reflect upon its brief but meaningful life after its mysterious death this year at the height of its career. Accompanied by archival images and a series of portraits by Nashat, Obituary is a gripping read on this mysterious icon and the roles it played. Exhibited and collected internationally, Nashat’s work involves his interest in art collections, art libraries, reproduction of works of art, appropriation and display issues and apparatus.

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ERNST WILHELM NAY

John-Paul Stonard & Pamela Kort

This book offers the first English-language overview of German abstract painter Ernst Wilhelm Nay’s life and work. John-Paul Stonard’s extensive survey details development of Nay’s art and his relationship to the culture and politics of his time, from the Weimar Republic through the Third Reich to the postwar partition of Germany. Pamela Kort introduces Nay’s rise to fame in Germany, followed by a comprehensive overview of Nay’s reception outside of Germany, specifically in America and Britain. The two texts are accompanied by full-color illustrations of Nay’s paintings and archival imagery of the artist’s life. Texts by John-Paul Stonard, Pamela Kort and Sir Norman Rosenthal

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WARREN NEIDICH

Lost Between the Extensivity / Intensivity Exchange

To visualize a brainstorm through diagrams is a proven strategy to generate innovative thinking. According to Giles Deleuze, “The diagram is indeed a chaos, a catastrophe but it is also a germ of order or rhythm.” Warren Neidich is a Berlinand Los Angeles–based post-conceptual artist who explores the interfaces between cultural production and brain research. In this project, Neidich attempts to give rise to the physical form of the “brainstorm” using performative wall drawing. This catalog includes documentation of that project as well as essays by Lia Gagintano and Sven-Olaf Wallenstein.

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ERNESTO NETO AND THE HUNI KUIN

Aru Kuxipa—Sacred Secret

Daniela Zyman, Eva Ebersberger & Franziska Sophie Wildförster (Eds.)

The exhibition at TBA Contemporary, Vienna, and its accompanying publication, Aru Kuxipa—Sacred Secret, was conceived by Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto (b. 1964) as a personal tribute to Brazil’s Huni Kuin people. Full-bleed color photographs of tribal rituals, related contemporary installations and small-scale drawings interleaved throughout the texts make this oversized Chinese-fold catalog a vibrant demonstration of the power of collective vision grounded in the sharing of knowledge and its preservation within ancestral communities. Neto and the editors have brought together over 20 contributors to explore the potential rooted in and inspired by deeply traditional cultures. Included are essays, oral histories, drawings, photographs and songs gathered by an international group of writers, researchers, anthropologists, scientists, artists, curators, filmmakers, historians and theorists, inspired by multiple exchanges between 32 Huni Kuin communities. Together, they describe and celebrate the way unique kinships produced within an indigenous cosmos and vision can shape our present moment.

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NEW DYSTOPIA

Mark Von Schlegell

Dystopia has been called “utopia’s wretched flipside,” yet contemporary science-fiction author Mark von Schlegell has figured out how to see dystopia not as pure apocalypse, but as a tabula rasa – a context from which luck, hope and a possible utopian future can emerge. Von Schlegell’s illustrated screenplay-as-science fiction novel is the jumping-off point for this exhibition catalog from the Musée d’Art Contemporain, Bordeaux. With many illustrations, reproductions and installation photos on the theme from several dozen important contemporary artists, including Wallace Berman, Isa Genzken, Franz West, Cosima von Bonin and the Pathetic Sympathy Seekers, among others.

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NEW WAYS OF DOING NOTHING

Vanessa Joan Müller & Cristina Ricupero (Eds.)

New Ways of Doing Nothing, a group exhibition at Kunsthalle Wien (2014), devoted itself to artistic works that oppose activity. Questioning the “status quo” by a refusal to participate, the group proposed a politics of radical passivity towards creating space for liberated thought to exist. A major influence for the exhibition is the titular character of Hermann Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street. The exhibition catalog, produced in black-and-white plus one color, presents itself as both source book and reader. It begins with a traditional display of individual works by over 20 artists—from Karl Holmqvist and Claire Fontaine collective to Robert Breer and Superflex—then breaks into a layered curatorial conversation and collage of reprinted text pages and excerpts introducing those artists and thinkers who, in the words of Bartleby, “prefer not to.” Selected texts by Giorgio Agamben, Giles Deleuze, Julius Gavroche, Paul Lafargue, Tereza Stejskalová and others.

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KATE NEWBY

Let the Other Thing In

Rosemary Heather & Nicolaus Schafhausen (Eds.)

In Kate Newby’s site-responsive installations, handcrafted and found objects are often combined with words or phrases to form artworks that engage with the particularities of place. The New Zealand artist’s intimate engagement with materials and nonhierarchical involvement with space exhibit a sophisticated understanding of the role that architecture plays in the shaping of thought and perception, our sense of self in the body and in community.

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KATE NEWBY

Incredible Feeling

Gwynneth Porter (Ed.)

Existing somewhere between a survey of recent work and artist’s book, Incredible Feeling is punctuated with four new photographic essays by New Zealand artist Kate Newby. The entire photo-based book is interspersed with specimens from Newby’s recent series, Skim Stones—delicate ceramic facsimiles of gems and common rocks found across her travels. Previously presented in a more traditional taxonomical format, here the stones are given to the artist’s friends to toss across the water at meaningful locations of their choice. These joyful, personal snapshots are interspersed with illustrations of a full range of Newby’s other recent projects including Let the other thing in (2013), the subject of her last publication from an artist residency on Fogo Island, Newfoundland. Creative texts from Sarah Hopkinson, Chris Kraus and Tahi Moore contribute to Newby’s winsome approach to making art in the everyday world.

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KORI NEWKIRK

1997–2007

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