Bas Jan Ader
Published by Le magasin, Grenoble, 1996, 16 pages (b/w ill.), 12 × 21 cm (softcover), English/French
Price: €8 (Out of stock)

Booklet published on the occasion of a 1996 exhibition commissioned by Paul McCarthy and featuring the work of three European artists exiled in California: Guy de Cointet, Bas Jan Ader and Wolfgang Stoerchle. The publication includes texts by Bas Jan Ader, Paul McCarthy, and Thomas Crow, biographical and bibliographical notes.

Dutch/Californian performance artist Bas Jan Ader (1942-1975) was last seen in 1975 when he took off in what would have been the smallest sailboat ever to cross the Atlantic. He left behind a small oeuvre, often using gravity as a medium, which more than 30 years after his disappearance at sea is more influential than ever before.

#1996 #basjanader
The Drumhead
Gerry Bibby
Published by Sternberg Press, Berlin, 2014, 118 pages, 13.2 × 20 cm, English
Price: €16

Artist Gerry Bibby’s first publication is a work of fiction that expands on the use of text in his sculpture, performance, and image work. Evoking William Burroughs’s The Wild Boys and Robert Walser’s The Walk, these “language costumes” pay homage to an unruly tradition of radical and queer literary presences over the last century. Their captivating passages brim with wit, wry observation, and (occasional) disgust, offering viewers “ways out,” even if only while reading.

Commissioned by If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want to Be Part of Your Revolution, The Drumhead follows a two-year collaboration with KUB Arena of the Kunsthaus Bregenz, The Showroom London, CCA Glasgow, and the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane. The book immodestly distills these institutional encounters into a multipart narrative that delves into the lives and psyches of those in the service industry. Exhaustion and frustration besiege a set of characters and the architecture that barely contains them, all of which are cipher-like in their multiplicity (and duplicity). Designed by HIT.

#2014 #gerrybibby #hit #ificantdanceidontwanttobepartofyourrevolution #natashasoobramanien #sternbergpress
Kellie Jones
Published by Duke Press, Durham, 2017, 416 pages (b/w ill.), 15 × 22.5 cm, English
Price: €22
In South of Pico, Kellie Jones (curator of Now Dig This, 2011) explores how the artists in Los Angeles's black communities during the 1960s and 1970s created a vibrant, productive, and engaged activist arts scene in the face of structural racism. Emphasizing the importance of African American migration, as well as L.A.'s housing and employment politics, Jones shows how the work of black Angeleno artists such as David Hammons, Melvin Edwards, Betye Saar, Charles White, Noah Purifoy, and Senga Nengudi spoke to the dislocation of migration, L.A.'s urban renewal, and restrictions on black mobility. Jones characterizes their works as modern migration narratives that look to the past to consider real and imagined futures. She also attends to these artists' relationships with gallery and museum culture and the establishment of black-owned arts spaces.
#2017 #betyesaar #charleswhite #davidhammons #johnoutterbridge #kelliejones #marenhassinger #melvinedwards #noahpurifoy #senganengudi
Control. Work 1962–1969
Stephen Willats
Published by Raven Row, London, 2014, 92 pages (colour & bw ill.), 21 × 28 cm, English
Price: €16 (Out of stock)

Stephen Willats has made work examining the function and meaning of art in society since the 1960s. His work has involved interdisciplinary processes and theory from sociology, systems analysis, cybernetics, semiotics and philosophy. This manifests in wall installations, project works, films & computer simulations, drawings & diagrams, bookworks and texts.

Published by Raven Row, London, this publication was produced alongside the first survey of his work from the 1960’s. Introduced to art as a teenage gallery assistant in 1958, by 1962 he was producing advanced artwork, embracing the transdisciplinarity of the time, while juggling the roles of social scientist, engineer, designer and artist. With texts by Antony Hudek, Emily Pethick, Christabel Stewart and Andrew Wilson. Designed by John Morgan Studio.

#2014 #control #johnmorganstudio #ravenrow #stephenwillats
Diagrams: Images from Ten Films
Harun Farocki
Published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Köln, 2014, 384 pages (colour & b/w ill), 24.4 × 16.8 cm, English
Price: €40 (Out of stock)

This publication attempts to map a visual approach to one of the world’s foremost documentary and essay filmmakers, Harun Farocki.

Unlike the many other, more theoretical publications about his work, this book operates with still images beyond an illustrative or documentary purpose.

By means of repetition, interruption and displacement, the configurations pursue specific movements within each film, taking into account mechanisms of order and open-endedness that are characteristic for Farocki’s work in general.

Diagrams traces the dynamics in ten of Farocki’s films and presents them along with each film’s complete commentaries, dialogues and intertitles, celebrating their major critical gesture: the exposition of mediality.

Edited by Benedikt Reichenbach. Text by Thomas Elsaesser, Maren Grimm, Jan Verwoert, Christa Blümlinger, Dietrich Leder, Ute Holl, Benedikt Reichenbach, Matthias Rajmann, Hila Peleg, Anselm Franke.

#2014 #benediktreichenbach #harunfarocki #verlagderbuchhandlungwaltherkonig
Giorgio Griffa
Published by Kunstraum Munchen, 1975, 96 pages (colour ill.), 27 x 28 cm, English/German
Price: €27 (Temporarily out of stock)

Printed on the occasion of Giorgio Griffa’s 1975 exhibition at Kunstraum Munchen. Actual size reproductions of 31 works on paper.

#1975 #giorgiogriffa