Japan's Modern Divide: The Photographs of Hiroshi Hamaya and Kansuke Yamamoto
Published by Getty Publications, Los Angeles, 2013, 224 pages (colour & b/w ill.), 24.1 × 28 cm, English
Price: €28

Produced on the occasion of Japan’s Modern Divide: The Photographs of Hiroshi Hamaya and Kansuke Yamamoto at the Getty Center, Los Angeles, 26 March–25 August, 2013.

Throughout his career Hiroshi Hamaya pursued objective documentation, while Kansuke Yamamoto favoured avant-garde forms of expression. These photographers embody two sides of modern Japanese life: the traditional and the forward looking, the rural and the urban, the Eastern and the Western.

Both artists grew up during the brief Taishō era (1912–1926), a period of industrialization and experimentation that ushered in the modern Shōwa era (1926–1989). It was during this time, between the international Depression and World War II, that Hamaya began to document regional traditions and social issues, primarily on the country’s rugged “back coast” along the Sea of Japan. In contrast, Yamamoto found inspiration in Surrealist art from Europe and produced innovative, socially conscious photographs, poems, and other works that advanced the avant-garde movement in Japan.

#2013 #hiroshihamaya #japaneseavantgarde #japanesephotography #kansukeyamamoto #photography
KEMPENS INFORMATIEBLAD: SPECIALE EDITIE WIELS
Jef Geys
Published by WIELS, Brussels & Jef Geys, Balen, 2013, 28 pages, (colour & b/w ill.), 29.2 × 44.5 cm, English / French / Dutch
Price: €8

Kempens Informatieblad, was a newspaper published by Belgian artist Jef Geys between 1971 and 2018.

Since the early 1960s, in addition to his interlocking artistic and pedagogical work, Geys was also involved in the production and distribution of a local newspaper, the Kempisch Reklaamblad, on whose pages he began to publish various textual and pictorial material among the advertisements placed therein. After it was discontinued, Geys took over the paper and continued it under his own direction as Kempens Informatieblad.

Functioning as an alternative to the conventional artist catalog, the issues, over 50 in total, were mostly published in connection with his exhibitions. As an information system directed by the artist, it successively developed into a kind of meta-medium within his practice, through which he himself organized his representation and mediation—beyond the exhibition context.

#2013 #jefgeys #kempensinformatieblad #wielsbrussels
Elements
Robert Glück
Published by Ithuriel's Spear, San Fransisco, 2013, 124 pages, 13.5 × 21.3 cm, English
Price: €18

Robert Glück founded the San Francisco-based New Narrative movement with Bruce Boone, Camille Roy, and others in the early 1980s, in reaction to Language poetry. New Narrative writing celebrates LGBTQ identity, autobiography, poetic disjunction, critical theory, gossip, pop culture, fable, and sexuality. Other writers associated with New Narrative include Steve Abbott, Kathy Acker, Dodie Bellamy, Mary Burger, Dennis Cooper, Sam D’Allesandro, Kevin Killian, and Gail Scott.

This collection of stories by Robert Glück was originally published in 1982 in San Francisco by Four Seasons Foundation under the title Elements of a Coffee Service.

#2013 #newnarrative #robertgluck
Imitation of Life
Mathias Poledna
Published by Distanz Verlag, Berlin, 2013, 108 pages (colour & b/w ill.), 23 × 25 cm, German / English
Price: €18 (Temporarily out of stock)

Produced on the occasion of Mathias Poledna’s participation at the 55th International Art Exhibition—Venice Biennale, representing Austria.

A 35mm colour film roughly three minutes in length, Imitation of Life was produced using the historic, labor-intensive technique of handmade animation and is built around a cartoon character performing a musical number. Its buoyant spirit and visual texture evoke the Golden Era of the American animation industry during the late 1930s and early 1940s. In the preceding years, the time of the Great Depression, the medium had evolved from a crude form of mass spectacle into a visual language of enormous richness and complexity that shaped and continues to resonate in our collective imaginary.

Designed by the artist in collaboration with Martha Stutteregger.

A portion of the film can be viewed here.

#2013 #marthastutteregger #mathiaspoledna
Marlow Moss
Riet Wijnen
Published by Kunstverein Publishing, Amsterdam, 2013, 128 pages, 11 × 17 cm, English
Price: €15 (Out of stock)

This publication tells the story of the British Constructivist artist Marlow Moss (1898–1958) and her work. A series of lists with ‘facts’ is compiled from writings about and by Moss. These lists contain contradictions and gaps. In part because some characters in the novels written by Netty Nijhoff, Moss’s partner, are based on Moss, and so this knowledge has been sometimes treated as non-fiction because of the lack of information on Moss. The result is that fiction became part of reality. The publication is an alternative biography that indirectly shows how history is constructed.

#2013 #kunstvereinamsterdam #kunstvereinpublishing #rietwijnen
The different possible variations, options, additions or substractions of the beginning of something
Marc Nagtzaam
Published by Roma Publications, 2013, 12 pages (b/w ill.), 21 × 29.7 cm, English
Price: €18 (Out of stock)

Reproductions of six wall drawings made by Marc Nagtzaam at San Serriffe, Amsterdam, during the month of June, 2013. Laser print on paper, hand stapled in a numbered edition of 40 copies.

Marc Nagtzaam has been producing a body of work that is based on one main subject: the idea of pattern, the repetition. He draws lines, grids, circles, words or sentences as in an endless search for collecting pieces of information.

#2013 #marcnagtzaam #romapublications