Sherrie Levine
Published by the Städtischen Museum, Leverkusen, 1998, 60 pages (colour & b/w ill.), 20 × 30 cm, French, German
Price: €13

The oeuvre of American artist Sherrie Levine takes on one of the most radical and purist positions concerning the examination of existential questions of contemporary art: she transfers the great Platonic theme that Marcel Duchamp transported into the 20th century into the present.

The exhibition catalogue of the Städtisches Museum Leverkusen Schloss Morsbroich and the Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain de Genève illustrates the artist’s first European solo exhibition.

#1998 #sherrielevine
Complete Writings 1959–1975
Donald Judd
Published by the Judd Foundation, New York, 2016, 240 pages (b/w ill.), 21.6 × 27.9 cm, English
Price: €25

Complete Writings 1959–1975 was first published in 1975 by The Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and since then it has been the primary source for Donald Judd’s early writing. Working as an art critic for the magazines Arts, Arts Magazine and, later, Art International, Judd regularly contributed reviews of contemporary art exhibitions between 1959 and 1965, but continued to write throughout his life on a broad range of subjects. In his reviews and essays, Judd discussed in detail the work of more than 500 artists showing in New York in the early and mid-1960s, and provided a critical account of this significant era of art in America. While addressing the social and political ramifications of art production, the writings frequently addressed the work of such artists as Jackson Pollock, Kazimir Malevich, Barnett Newman, Ad Reinhardt, Lee Bontecou, Yayoi Kusama, John Chamberlain, Dan Flavin, Kenneth Noland and Claes Oldenburg. Judd’s essay “Specific Objects,” first published in 1965, remains central to the analysis of the new art developed in the early 1960s. Other essays included in this publication are “Complaints I” (1969), “Complaints II” (1973) and his previously unpublished essay “Imperialism, Nationalism and Regionalism” (1975), all of which establish the polemical importance of Judd’s writing.

#2016 #donaldjudd
EVERY SINGLE DAY
Haim Steinbach
Published by Museum Kurhaus, Kleve, 2018, 8 postcards (b/w ill.), 10.5 × 15 cm, German
Price: €30

Set of 8 postcards produced on the occasion of Haim Steinbach: every single day, a comprehensive solo exhibition at the Museum Kurhaus Kleve, 22 September, 2018–27 January, 2019.

For more than four decades, Haim Steinbach has explored the psychological, aesthetic, cultural and ritualistic aspects of collecting and arranging already existing objects. His work engages the concept of “display” as a form that foregrounds objects, raising consciousness of the play of presentation. Steinbach selects and arranges objects—which range from the natural to the ordinary, the artistic to the ethnographic—thereby emphasizing their identities, inherent meanings and associations. An important influence in the growth of post-modern artistic dialogue, Steinbach’s work has radically redefined the status of the object in art.

#2018 #ephemera #haimsteinbach
PEINTURES
Atsuko Tanaka
Published by Galerie Stadler, Paris, 1987, 8 pages (colour & b/w ill.), 21 × 15 cm, French
Price: €40

Publication produced for Atsuko Tanaka’s exhibition Peintures at Galerie Stadler, Paris, 30 January– 7 March, 1987.

Atsuko Tanaka was a Japanese avant-garde artist best known for her Neo-Dada Electric Dress (1956), a garment made from hundreds of lightbulbs painted in primary colors. This iconic work, which she wore to exhibitions, functions as a conflation of Japanese traditional clothing with modern urbanization, bringing an unexpected and challenging interpretation to both. “I wanted to shatter stable beauty with my work,” Tanaka once said. A member of the Gutai movement, much of her work used domestic objects like lightbulbs, textiles, doorknobs, and doorbells. With these objects, the artist was able to create work about the body without a body present. She maintained a broad practice that included performance “happenings,” sculpture, and installation, while her later work focusing on two-dimensional painting, with colorful organic abstract shapes connecting circles and lines.

#1987 #atsukotanaka #japaneseavantgarde
Experiment, řád, důvěrnost
Běla Kolářová
Published by Muzeum Umění, Olomouc, 2006, 128 pages (colour & b/w ill.), 24 × 28 cm, Czech
Price: €22 (Out of stock)

Published on the occasion of Experiment, řád, důvěrnost: Běla Kolářová at Muzeum Umění, Olomouc, 27 September–31 December, 2006.

Prague-based artist Běla Kolářová (1923–2010) began experimenting with photographic techniques in the early 1960s, creating photograms and X-ray photographs that continued the Bauhaus tradition of photography as an abstract medium. Thus, for a series of photograms she called vegetages, she produced miniature “artificial negatives” by pressing natural materials into soft paraffin and using them for the exposure of the photographic paper instantaneously as “negatives.” In the late sixties Kolářová increasingly began creating assemblages out of found objects including household items such as snap fasteners, needles and safety pins. Kolářová arranged these objects according to conceptual grids, and thus they are somewhat akin to the work of Nouveaux Realistes as well as to various conceptual practices. The work she produced in this way defied the aesthetic canon of Socialist Realism, and Kolářová developed a remarkable conceptual feminist style that was all her own.

In recent years, Kolářová’s work was shown at the documenta 12 (2007), at Raven Row in London (2010) and in solo shows at the Museum Kampa in Prague (2008) and Muzeum Umění in Olomouc (2006).

#2006 #abstractphotography #belakolarova
Bill 1
Julie Peeters (ed.)
Published by Roma Publications, Amsterdam, 2018, 176 pages (colour & b/w ill.), 23 × 31 cm, English
Price: €22 (Out of stock)

First issue of an annual magazine of photographic stories, edited and designed by Julie Peeters. Twelve contributors present new or previously unpublished work. BILL prioritizes visual reading without distraction, the images that appear in the magazine are printed without any accompanying text. Contributors to the first issue are: Jochen Lempert, Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili, Katja Mater, Elena Narbutaite, Rosalind Nashashibi & Vivian Suter, Arthur Ou, Scott Ponik, Adam Putnam, Johannes Schwartz, Algirdas Šeškus, Linda van Deursen, and Stand Up Comedy.

#2018 #adamputnam #bill #elenanarbutaite #jochenlempert #johannesschwartz #juliepeeters #katjamater #ketutaaleximeskhishvili #lindavandeursen #photography #romapublications #rosalindnashashibi #scottponik #viviansuter