Produced on the occasion of Herman Scholten’s exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 30 November 1974–28 January 1975.

SM Cat. No 570.

Designed by Wim Crouwel.

Jochen Lempert photographs the animal world in the most diverse contexts: from their natural habitat to the museum of natural history, from the zoo to the urban environment, in remote places or banal settings and situations. Lempert compiles his findings in a vast archive of images covering an ample spectrum, from common everyday views, to compositions that tend towards abstraction. This interest in the natural world as a subject has been further complemented by his exploration of the properties and materiality of the photographic image. Analogue, black and white, hand-printed in the darkroom, his photographs resist categorization and confront the canons of today’s aesthetic.

In his presentations, Lempert uses groupings and scale to respond to the exhibition space. He places and selects the photographs thoughtfully, always looking for cross-references and associations, uncovering subtle correspondences. Lempert’s arrangements give us new insights into our own place within the patterns, the structures and even the randomness or the order of the natural world.

This book is both a record and a theoretical expansion of the exhibition “All Men Become Sisters” at the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź. Dedicated to the manifestation of sisterhood in art from the 1970s until today, the exhibition and the publication focus on art that resonated with feminist perspectives on work, production, and reproduction. “Sisterhood” is a key concept and an impulse to work with imagination; built on the foundations of second-wave criticism of the patriarchal exploitation of women, it poses questions about the future from the perspective of feminist economics and ethics of care. The exhibition included the following artists: Berwick Street Film Collective, Pauline Boudry/Renate Lorenz, Sarah Browne, Agnieszka Brzeżańska, Jan Czapliński, Ines Doujak in cooperation with John Barker, Köken Ergun, Hackney Flashers, Krystyna Gryczełowska, Margaret Harrison, Elżbieta Jabłońska, Birgit Jürgenssen, Irena Kamieńska, Ola Kozioł/Suavas Levy, Nalini Malani, Marge Monko, Şükran Moral, Teresa Murak, Letícia Parente, Agnieszka Piksa, Marcin Polak, Aleksandra Polisiewicz, Raqs Media Collective, R.E.P., Alicja Rogalska, Daniel Rumiancew, Jadwiga Sawicka, Allan Sekula, Jo Spence, Rosemarie Trockel, Agnès Varda, Mona Vǎtǎmanu/Florin Tudor, Zorka Wollny Copublished with Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź. Designed by Monika Zawadzki, Olo Jean-Claude Zawadzki

Booklet for On Kawara’s Pure Consciousness project in Münster for the archival exhibition on the history of the project (1998–2017), on display at the Pablo Picasso Art Museum, within the framework of the Skulptur Projekte 2017, 10 June–1 October, 2017.

“The Skulptur Projekte 2017 (SP17) have staged the first venue for Pure Consciousness since Kawara’s death in 2014, ushering in a new era in the work’s existence. The Münster presentation was reserved exclusively for the children at the Berg Fidel day-care centre, and purposely took place in the spring of this year, that is, before the actual Skulptur Projekte dates. The documentation on view here sheds light on the exhibition in the Münster kindergarten as well as on the previous venues of Pure Consciousness since 1998.”—Exhibition wall text excerpt

In the artistic activities of Philippe Thomas (1951–1995), there was a determination to disappear: it was his procedure to transfer his title of author onto his collectors. This was the case when selling an artwork, or whenever the author’s credit was needed for a commissioned text, and in the institutional co-operations that Thomas was a participant of. With this strategy Thomas worked against his own historicization, erasing his name from the reigning European and North American art fields and with prescience Thomas “put up obstacles to block his future ‘googleability’” (Hanna Magauer). In recent years, the works and writings of the artist, who also acted on behalf of the semi-fictional agency readymades belong to everyone®, again gained greater visibility and as of current are being assigned a place in art history.

With this book, Élisabeth Lebovici elaborates on Thomas’s strategy to cede and fictionalize authorship and suggests a reading of his work that incorporates questions of gender and reproduction, the multiplicity of the subjects involved, and the unbearable disappearance of Thomas (who died of AIDS-related complications), into the process of enunciation. It is Lebovici’s suggestion that the performativity of Thomas’s work requires two versions at once: “the one where one enters into the fiction and the one where one observes the beauty of the arrangement and the plot at work. The one where one is inside and the one where one contemplates it.”

Designed by HIT.

Guy Mees’s (1935–2003) photographs, videos, and above all his fragile works on paper are characterized by a formal rigor combined with sensitivity and delicacy. The uniqueness of his oeuvre lies precisely in its avoidance of conventional aesthetics and discursive classifications. A leading figure of the Belgian avant-garde, Mees left behind an outstanding body of work that transgresses geometric abstraction, Minimalism, Conceptualism, and applied art.

The Weather is Quiet, Cool, and Soft is published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition at Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (February 1–April 8, 2018), and at Mu.ZEE, Ostend (November 25, 2018–March 10, 2019). Borrowed from a note the artist jotted down on one of his works on paper, the title pays homage to the atmospheric impermanence of Mees’s works, as well as his infra-ordinary, relativistic, and poetic approach.

Edited by Lilou Vidal. Texts by François Piron, Fernand Spillemaeckers, Lilou Vidal, Wim Meuwissen, Dirk Snauwaert, Micheline Szwajcer. Copublished with Kunsthalle Wien. Designed by Joris Kritis.

Lilou Vidal, curator of the exhibition and François Piron, art critic, curator and editor, to discuss Guy Mees’ work here.