Wine label designed by Marc Camille Chaimowicz.

Taking its title from the Elaine May’s 1987 film Ishtar, this group exhibition curated by Los Angeles-based critic Bruce Hainley touches on many of the same interests and dichotomies: a comedy that is political and analytical at the same time; an abstraction but also a representation; and a cultural production outside of much discourse. The catalogue traces the attempt to create an informed dialogue for artwork that evades easy classifications and readymade discussions of abstraction vs. representation. Featured artists include: Brian Calvin, Samara Caughey, Lecia Dole-Recio, Trisha Donnelly, Vincent Fecteau, Richard Hawkins, Larry Johnson, Patrick Hill, Cady Noland, Sturtevant.

Isa Genzken’s Der Spiegel 1989–1991 consists of 121 reproductions of black-and-white photographs cut out of the influential German newsweekly Der Spiegel over a period of three years. The images are presented starkly, bereft of photo credits or captions: having been freed from their usual meaning-giving context, the images assume a mystery and free-floating universality as the viewer unconsciously struggles to recall the specificity of the sensational news story and headline to which they were once attached. The book is produced in a limited edition of 700 numbered copies.

The artistic practice of Mladen Stilinović, one of the founders and the liveliest protagonists of conceptual art in Croatia and the region, may be presented by using the key words, i.e. words that introduce the core problem and the procedures that the artist uses: language, ideology, manipulation, appropriation, correction, irony, installation, de-contextualization, exploitation, repetition, tautology. In Stilinović’s well-known Dictionary–Pain (2000–2003) have been crossed out white and changed into one and the same word of unique meaning—pain—in a potential “imperatival dictionary” some words could easily change places and the structure without the change of meaning.

Edited by Daniel Buchholz and Christopher Müller. Produced on the occasion of Jack Goldstein’s first exhibition at Galerie Buchholz in 2000, with aphorisms by the artist, a new essay by John Miller and an interview by Morgan Fisher. The book also includes a commented list of Jack Goldstein’s films and records.

Jack Goldstein was one of the most important artists of the 80’s in New York. He returned to California in the 90’s and slowly disappeared from the art world until renewed interest in his work began to happen in 2000. He was in the first graduating class from CalArts and went on to experiment with performance, film, recording, sculpture, and painting. His art of the late seventies, eighties, and early nineties influenced many artists who came after him. He died on 14 March, 2003.

Produced on the occasion of the exhibition Ketty La Rocca, at Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck, 6 June–10 August, 2003.

Ketty La Rocca (1938–1976) was an important proponent of Conceptual and Body Art in Italy in the 1960s and 70s. Based on a visual poetry, she dealt radically with the sociopolitical limits of the meaning of language and images in her collages, performances and photographs. A central aspect is the examination of the bodily gesture as an “original means of communication”.