Optimundus accompanies Jos de Gruyter & Harald Thys’s major exhibition at M HKA of the same title—the term they use for their particular conception of the parallel world. Narratives and criticism by Michael Van den Abeele, Nav Haq, Jennifer Krasinksi, Dieter Roelstraete, and artist Peter Wächtler are presented along with photos, drawings, and text illustrating the unsteady barriers and tense contact between Optimundus and the real world.

Produced on the occasion of A Void: Henri Chopin, Guy de Cointet, Channa Horwitz at Kunsthalle Düsseldorf 16 May – 30 June, 2013.

Each in their own way, Henri Chopin, Guy de Cointet and Channa Horwitz dedicated themselves to analyzing systems of meaning and working out their rules-based connections, transforming or reinventing them in the process. Horwitz’s drawings are indebted to the aesthetics of notation, the close link between idea, process and work. With the help of a set of rules she creates complex structures whose vibrating pictorial structure masks their underlying logic. Chopin, a key figure in French visual poetry and sound poetry—explored the relationship of chaos and order with his typewriter poems while de Cointet left behind numerous drawings full of codes and puzzles, in which he transformed meanings into visual signifiers.

Algirdas Šeškus found photography in 1975 when he learned that he would need to bring ten photographs to a job interview for the position of cameraman at the only television channel in Soviet Lithuania. Nobody looked at the pictures, but the camera he bought for the purpose showed him the world anew, and he continued photographing for the next decade.

Produced on the occasion of the exhibition Ed Atkins at MoMA PS1, New York, 20 January – 14 April, 2013.

Known for his high-definition videos that defy narrative conventions, Ed Atkins works with filmic and text-based forms in technological transition. The artist considers HD technology deathlike because of how it intensifies the visibility of the filmed subject, creating an image that prioritises its own representation over the language, character, and emotions of the figures it depicts. Often creating installations that include collage, drawing, and other mediums, the artist deploys this bodiless movie format to highlight the conflicting intimacies that today’s mechanisms of cultural production represent and allow us to achieve.

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

Produced on the occasion of Liz Deschenes’ exhibition at Secession, Vienna, 7 December – 10 February, 2013.

Liz Deschenes’s photographic oeuvre deals with the conditions of photography and its components, with perception and the correlation to other artistic media, and with the architecture within which her works are shown. Her works allow a self-referential look at the medium, liberated of its functions, taking its own conditions as its theme.

Edited by Mai Abu ElDahab. Following From Berkeley to Berkeley: Objectif Exhibitions, 2008–2010, this publication is the second in a two-part series of interviews with artists who exhibited at Objectif Exhibitions, Antwerp, between 2010 and 2011. The interviews are accompanied by a collection of secondary and parallel material produced in collaboration with each artist.

Interviews: Matias Faldbakken by Nikki Columbus, Will Holder by Richard Birkett, Sophie Nys by Dieter Roelstraete, Clifford Irving by Francis McKee, Patricia Esquivias by Jonas Žakaitis, Norma Jeane and Tim Etchells by Anna Colin, Michael Portnoy by Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy, Hassan Khan by Brian Kuan Wood, Barbara Visser by Raimundas Malašauskas; and contributions by Mai Abu ElDahab and Dexter Sinister.

*Please note this publication is secondhand and has some traces of previous ownership (missing dust jacket, some damage).