Fine Arts
Jos de Gruyter & Harald Thys
Published by Sternberg Press, Berlin, 2016, 96 pp. (colour & b/w ill.), 21.5 × 27.5 cm, English
Price: €29

Produced on the occasion of the eponymous touring exhibition at CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco; MoMA PS1, New York; and Raven Row, London, in 2015.

The conceptual duo Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys continue in the project “Fine Arts” with their playful approach that draws on dystopian narratives. In this scenario the artists have became watercolorists; unfashionably harping back to the previous century’s pictorial tradition while basing their picture making on a range of quotidian and historical images culled from the Internet.

Designed by Boy Vereecken and Harald Thys.

#2016 #boyvereecken #ccawattisinstitute #josdegruyterandharaldthys #ravenrow #sternbergpress
We Must Become Idealists or Die
Gustav Metzger
Published by Fundacion Jumex, Mexico City, 2016, 536 pp. (colour & b/w ill.), 17.5 × 26.7 cm, English/Spanish
Price: €30 (Out of stock)

Produced on the occasion of the exhibition Gustav Metzger, We Must Become Idealists or Die at Fundacion Jumex, Mexico City, 9 July–25 October, 2015.

This catalogue compiles in four sections archival material, photographs and texts in order to know in depth the contribution of Metzger to the critical thinking from the art for the social change. Among the key pieces within his artistic production are the manifestos that Metzger developed from 1959 to 1966, the Destruction in Art Symposium of 1966, and his public call Three Years Without Art 1977–1980.

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

#2016 #gustavmetzger
Photography Against the Grain:
Essays and Photo Works 1973–1983
Allan Sekula
Published by Mack Books, London, 2016, 250 pp. (colour & b/w ill.), 21.5 × 27.7 cm, English
Price: €35

Long out of print, this seminal collection of essays and photographs are by artist, theorist and filmmaker, Allan Sekula. Originally published by the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 1984, in these essays and images Sekula sought to portray the inextricable bond between labour and material culture, drawing deeply on Marxist theory to argue passionately for a collective model of progress.

Sekula taught at California Institute of Arts (CalArts) from 1985 until his death in 2013, and from that insider’s position he critiqued photography and the circumstances of its production and consumption, exposing what the medium failed to represent—women, labourers, minorities and the institutional structures that reinforce cultural biases.

#2016 #allansekula #mackbooks
Postcards
Luigi Ghirri
Published by Mack Books, London, 2016, 18 postcards housed in a printed sleeve (colour & b/w ill.), 14.8 × 10.5 cm, English
Price: €12

A collection of 18 postcards of images from the remarkable oeuvre of the enigmatic Italian photographer Luigi Ghirri. Spanning 1970 to 1992, this curated selection includes many of his classic photographs, as well as lesser-known images.

#2016 #luigighirri #mackbooks #photography
Working Conditions:
The Writings of Hans Haacke
Published by MIT Press, Cambridge, 2016, 344 pp. (colour & b/w ill.), 18.5 × 23.7 cm, English
Price: €18

This volume collects writings by Haacke that explain and document his practice. The texts, some of which have never before been published, run from straightforward descriptions to wide-ranging reflections and full-throated polemics. They include correspondence with MoMA and the Guggenheim and a letter refusing to represent the United States at the 1969 São Paulo Biennial; the title piece, “Working Conditions,” which discusses corporate influence on the art world; Haacke’s thinking about “real-time social systems”; and texts written for museum catalogs on various artworks, including GERMANIA, in the German Pavilion of the 1993 Venice Biennial; DER BEVÖLKERUNG (To the Population) of 2000 at the Berlin Reichstag; Mixed Messages, an exhibition of objects from the Victoria and Albert Museum (2001); and Gift Horse, unveiled on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square in 2015.

*Please note this publication is missing it’s original dust jacket.

#2016 #hanshaacke
An Autumn Lexicon
Marc Camille Chaimowicz
Published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther Konig, Köln, 2016, 136 pp. (colour & b/w ill.), 21 × 26 cm, English
Price: €75

Produced on the occasion of the exhibition An Autumn Lexicon at the Serpentine Gallery London, 29 September–20 November, 2016.

#2016 #marccamillechaimowicz