Manfred Pernice
Published by Mousse Publishing, Milan, 2016, 144 pages (colour ill.), softcover, 23.5 × 17 cm, English/Spanish
Price: €20

Produced on the occasion of Manfred Pernice’s solo exhibition at Lulu, Mexico City, this monographic catalogue focuses on the artist’s ongoing Kassetten (cassettes) series, initially begun in 2012. Spanning back to 1996, the book features abundant documentation of the various manifestations of the works, visual references, and other recent sculptures as well as texts by Lulu co-founder Chris Sharp.

#2016 #chrissharp #lulu #manfredpernice #moussepublishing
Floristan
Jef Geys
Published by Belgische post/Poste Belge, Brussels, 2012, sheet (16 × 15.5 cm) with 10 stamps (2.7 × 4 cm)
Price: €25 (Out of stock)

Produced on the occasion of the exhibition Jef Geys: KOME, Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België and Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique in 2012. Design by Luc Derycke.

#2012 #ephemera #jefgeys
1895-1949 光のダンディズム
Iwata Nakayama
Published by Heibonsha,Tokyo, 1987, 103 pages (b/w ill.), 28 × 22 cm, Japanese
Price: €40 (Out of stock)

Iwata Nakayama (1895–1949) is regarded as a one of the most important contributors to the Shinko Shashin movement. After graduating from the Tokyo School of Fine Arts in 1918, he received a scholarship from the Japanese government and went to California before settling in New York. At the same time Nakayama was attracted to avant-garde movements and moved in bohemian circles where he met Shimizu Toshi. Shimizu encouraged him to move to Paris in 1926 where he met Man Ray, Fujita Tsuguji, and Enrico Prompolini. These encounters left a deep impression on him and when he returned to Japan in 1927 he energetically set about forming his own vision of ‘pure art photography’. In 1929 he settled in Ashiya (nr. Kobe) and in the following year founded the Ashiya Camera Club with Hanaya Kambei, Korai Seiji, and others. This club became the main driving force of New Photography in Japan. Together with Kimura and Nojima he founded Koga magazine in 1932 that was the most important forum for artistic photography at the time.

#1987 #abstractphotography #iwatanakayama #japaneseavantgarde #japanesephotography #photography
Stranded Assets, Modulo 2: Protezione Ambientale
Sam Lewitt
Published by Onestar Press, Paris , 2017, 144 pages (one colour printing (black) on pulp paper + 4 pages printed in colour on gloss paper and 5 pages printed in colour on transparent acetate), 21 × 19.7 cm, English/Italian
Price: €48

Stranded Assets–Modulo 2: Protezione Ambientale is a modified reproduction of a regulations and emissions handbook retrieved from the recently decommissioned coal-fired Giuseppe Volpi power station in Porto Marghera, Venice. Lewitt retrieved this handbook in the course of research for his work Stranded Assets at the 57th Biennale d’Arte Venezia.

The general set of operational standards presented and explained in this handbook are paired against fragments and images taken from the Volpi plant, inserting particular fragments from this defunct energy infrastructure against the legislative context that prescribed its operation. Most conspicuously, transparency pages depicting four lamps featured in the central stairwell of the power station are evenly dispersed throughout the book. The lamps’ form resembles an open book whose ‘pages’ are populated with vertical rows of glass rods, through which light is refracted into the building’s stairwell.

Lewitt’s contribution to the Biennale consists in temporarily displacing these lamps into the Venetian Arsenale—the former site of the turbines that powered Venice, which was taken over by the Volpi plant. In his installation in the Arsenale, the original lamps illuminate his designated exhibition area. As an updated facsimile of an ENEL technical manual detailing emissions standards, the book pursues the gap that persists between the experience of a well-lit space of representation, and control of the energy commodity that lights it.

#2017 #samlewitt
Enkele Werken
John Knight
Published by Witte de With, Rotterdam, 1990, 48 pages (colour & b/w ill.), 28 × 32 cm, English
Price: €11

Published on the occasion of the exhibition John Knight: Some Works, 7 April–20 May, 1990 at Witte de With, Rotterdam. Text includes Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, Knight’s Moves: Situating the Art/Object and Anne Rorimer, John Knight: Designating the Site.

Since 1969, American artist John Knight (1945) has concentrated on the relationship between architecture, design and art. He bases his work on the interplay between the material object and its contextual conditions, and comments on the meaning of cultural object and cultural space by employing strategies that invert the conventions of production and reception. See more on the show here.

#1990 #annerorimer #benjaminhdbuchloh #johnknight #wittedewith
An Index
Tim Rollins and K.O.S.
Published by JRP Ringier, Zurich, 2012, 226 pages (colour & b/w ill.), hardcover, 21 × 24.7 cm, English
Price: €36 (Out of stock)

In 1980 Rollins began teaching art for middle school students in a South Bronx public school. In 1982, he launched the “Art and Knowledge Workshop” in the Bronx together with a group of at-risk students who called themselves K.O.S. (Kids of Survival). You can read more in Julia Ault’s great dedication here.

Tim Rollins and K.O.S. (Kids of Survival) have been collaboratively drawing and painting on book pages since 1982. The publication has been conceived as a guide to this work, analyzing the group’s artistic method from its inception through to today. The aim is to set up an index that gathers together all the books on which the group has worked: each one is discussed based on the reasons for its selection, alongside images of the work itself.

The current members of K.O.S., at the time of Rollins’ death at age 62 in December 2017, included Angel Abreu (b. 1974), Jorge Abreu (b. 1979), Robert Branch (b. 1977), Ala Ebtekar (b. 1978), Ricardo Nelson Savinon (b. 1971), Noe Sosa (b. 1992), and Logan Swedick (b. 1995).

#2012 #jrpringier #timrollinsandkos