Published on the occasion of the exhibition at Michael Werner Gallery, New York, 7 June–21 July, 1990.

A.R. Penck was a German Neo-Expressionist whose paintings of figures and symbols nod to both German Expressionists like Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Art Brut. Penck’s Standart works, which employ a lexicon of pictograph-like marks the artist referred to as “building blocks”, are essential in understanding both his process and ideology. Though often associated with the graffiti-based work of Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, his style emerged independently as a response to the censorship of the German Democratic Republic. Expelled to West Germany by the GDR Communist regime in 1980, he became a part of a milieu of Neo-Expressionist painters which included Markus Lüpertz and Jörg Immendorff.

This book reproduces a selection of Dan Graham’s grid drawings and typewriter pieces from the 1960s originally published in 1990 by Galerie Bleich-Rossi, in Graz, Austria. Published by Publication Studio with the permission of the artist.

Catalogue from the 1990 exhibition at Isabella Kacprzak, Koln of Untitled (Peace conference tables designed by North Vietnam and the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam; and the United States and South Vietnam, 1969).

Ronald Jones gained prominence in New York during the mid-1980s by using disparate formal and minimal languages to explore history as a medium. Through juxtapositions of historical events, innovations, discoveries, violence and fear, he explores the complex interrelation of events as they define our perception of ourselves and the world often through connecting seemingly unrelated occurrences. His materials include Steven Biko’s interrogation room, the first artificial heart, collapse boards from a prison gallows, and parts of the Pan Am flight 103, which was destroyed by a terrorist attack over Lockerbie in Scotland. Jones’ works provoke the perception of minimalism and design by introducing didactic methodologies to undermine our understanding of autonomy.