Stellproblemen (which means “set-problems”, and is purposely misspelled in German), is an artist book by Heimo Zobernig. Along with notions like alter ego, copy, dummy, imitation, mimicry, proxy, remake, substitution, and, of course, coincidence, the book addresses for the first time a central aspect of his work: the notion of repetition, which is inscribed into the very design of the book.

With texts by Dan Fox, Anja Casser and a conversation with Daniel Pies.

This first monograph of German artist Andrea Büttner follows her solo exhibition at Badischer Kunstverein and was developed in close collaboration with the artist. In addition to drawing, photograph, video, reverse painting on glass and silkscreen, Büttner uses the technique of woodcut. It is the supposed antiquity of this medium – as well as the artistic tradition which it evokes – that refers to a fundamental question in her work: How is it possible to comprehend or to describe the threshold which is occupied by an artwork between the intimate practice of production and the public practice of exhibitions? Büttner’s works not only thematize aspects of individual surrender, failure and shame, but also refer to the exemplary, utopian imagination of life-forms operating beyond these feelings of inadequacy.

Produced on the occasion of Ian Wilson’s Discussion at Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 1 March, 2009.

Ian Wilson presented spoken language as his artistic medium, liberating art from its material form and opening it up to the unpredictability of verbal exchange. Through his Discussions, he engaged individuals in private and public conversations about verbal communication. Wilson views speech as dematerialized sculpture, believing that words enable one to “have the essential features of the object at your disposal.”

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

Produced on the occasion of the exhibition Prunella Clough, 50 Years of Making Art at Annely Juda Fine Art, London, 28 January–21 March, 2009.

Prunella Clough found her subjects by touring London’s industrial wastelands and bombsites – docks, power stations, factories and scrapyards – creating gritty, urban images. Her work – comprising paintings, collages, drawings, reliefs and graphics – increasingly centred on the components of the cityscape as her art, shifted away from representation through various influences including cubism and European abstraction.

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

In the artist’s book My sweet little lamb, Mladen Stilinović deals with the relationship between language and reality and the resulting identity constellations. In doing so, he makes reference to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s “language-games,” where the simple use of linguistic elements is always intertwined with actions to gauge their actual meaning. The artist employs quotations from Wittgenstein’s “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus” such as: “Everything we see could also be otherwise,” “Objects I can only name,” and “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” These sentences also relate to objects and actions that the artist witnessed on the street, such as a delivery van for meat with the image of a piglet printed on the outside and the accompanying slogan “My sweet little lamb.” Stilinović thereby questions the reality of what one sees in combination with its textual denotation in the sense of a “language-game.” This particular work refers to different religions and their eating customs in its specific naming of food.

This book by Lucy McKenzie presents her work from a three year period in text and image. Her huge paintings illustrate interiors and reference interior design drafts from the 19th century. In these paintings, which are up to eight metres tall, in this book she explains the motivation behind her complex approach. This is complimented by two more written pieces: a fictional account of her time studying Trompeloeil painting at the Ecole van der Kelen (a traditional painting school in Brussels) and a homage to the fashion designer Beca Lipscombe, one of her collaborators in Atelier EB.

Designed by HIT Studio. Cover design by Torsten Slama.