Produced on the occasion of Portraits a solo exhibition by Ghislaine Leung displayed at Museum Abteiberg from 3 June–24 October, 2021, curated by Susanne Titz and Haris Giannouras. The exhibition comprised of works commissioned by Museum Abteiberg and produced over the duration of a year from 2020–21. The catalogue references the legendary box catalogues developed by previous museum director Johannes Cladders with Joseph Beuys in 1967. With essays from Bruce Hainley and Eleanor Ivory Weber.

You can see a round table discussion of the exhibition featuring Bruce Hainley, Fatima Hellberg & Susanne Titz and Haris Giannouras here.

This publication assembles three phases of Termite Economies, a major series of artworks produced between 2018–2020 by the Australian artist Nicholas Mangan.

In Termite Economies (Phase 1) Mangan researched an anecdote that termite abilities might one day lead humans to gold deposits. Phase 2 explored termite eusociality, pheromonal communication, building behaviour, biomimicry, super-organism and swarm intelligence. Phase 3 deployed termite collectivism as a speculative model for rerouting human neural pathways. Within each phase, Mangan developed specific methods to explore these phenomena formally, spatially, and through moving images.

The book presents each phase in the order of the exhibition series. It includes process and research photographs, diagrams, installation and detailed imagery. It includes an essay by Artist Mariana Silva, a fictional text by writer ST.Lore, a conversation between Mangan and cultural theorist Ana Teixeira Pinto, and a republished essay by Dr. Guy Theraulaz. Designed by Žiga Testen.

In the transition from Symbolism to international modernism that occurred between Ferdinand Hodler and Mondrian, no other Swiss artist succeeded in creating an oeuvre as confident and idiosyncratic as that of Otto Meyer-Amden. Born in 1885 in Bern, Meyer initially trained as a lithographer before attending the School of Arts and Crafts in Zürich. Following a semester at the Academy of Arts in Munich, he joined the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart in 1907, where he studied for a short time under Adolf Hölzel, whose interest in abstract formal principles set him apart from the prevailing naturalism of the time. It was there that he encountered Willi Baumeister and Oskar Schlemmer, with whom he would go on to maintain a close exchange until his death, exerting a strong influence on the pair.

In the transition from Symbolism to international modernism that occurred between Ferdinand Hodler and Mondrian, no other Swiss artist succeeded in creating an oeuvre as confident and idiosyncratic as that of Otto Meyer-Amden. Born in 1885 in Bern, Meyer initially trained as a lithographer before attending the School of Arts and Crafts in Zürich. Following a semester at the Academy of Arts in Munich, he joined the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart in 1907, where he studied for a short time under Adolf Hölzel, whose interest in abstract formal principles set him apart from the prevailing naturalism of the time. It was there that he encountered Willi Baumeister and Oskar Schlemmer, with whom he would go on to maintain a close exchange until his death, exerting a strong influence on the pair.

*Please note this publication is secondhand and has some traces of previous ownership.

In the transition from Symbolism to international modernism that occurred between Ferdinand Hodler and Mondrian, no other Swiss artist succeeded in creating an oeuvre as confident and idiosyncratic as that of Otto Meyer-Amden. Born in 1885 in Bern, Meyer initially trained as a lithographer before attending the School of Arts and Crafts in Zürich. Following a semester at the Academy of Arts in Munich, he joined the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart in 1907, where he studied for a short time under Adolf Hölzel, whose interest in abstract formal principles set him apart from the prevailing naturalism of the time. It was there that he encountered Willi Baumeister and Oskar Schlemmer, with whom he would go on to maintain a close exchange until his death, exerting a strong influence on the pair.

Born in 1951, Villiger trained in sculpture but discovered photography at the end of the 1970s. From 1981 until her death in 1997 she concentrated on taking photographs of herself. She emphatically believed in the power of the body even though, or rather because, she was already coping with the isolation caused by tuberculosis, which she had contracted at the age of 29. She believed not only in a life lived to excess, but also in the idea that photography can somehow renew the physical self.

With texts by Jean-Christophe Ammann and Niklaus Oberholzer.

*Please note this publication is secondhand and has some traces of previous ownership.