Inspired by Joseph Cornell’s assemblages and Simon Rodia’s Los Angeles monuments, the Watts Towers (made from found scrap materials), Betye Saar’s work mixes surreal, symbolic imagery with a folk art aesthetic. As a participant in the robust African-American Los Angeles art scene of the 1970s, Saar appropriated characters such as Aunt Jemima, Uncle Tom, and other stereotypes from folk culture and advertising in her works—usually collages and assemblages. African tribal mysticism, history, memory, and nostalgia are also important for Saar. She was invited to participate in “Pacific Standard Time,” a 2011 survey of influential LA artists, for which she created Red Time, an installation of her assemblages from both past and present that explored the relationship between personal and collective history. “I’m the kind of person who recycles materials but I also recycle emotions and feelings,” she explains.
Kellie Jones, in her essay ‘To/from Los Angeles with Betye Saar’ points out that Saar’s focus on the female body, a full decade before the pre-eminence of feminist art-making in the 1970s, speaks to her force as a member of the vanguard and the visionary.
Produced on the occasion of Manfred Pernice’s solo exhibition at Lulu, Mexico City, this monographic catalogue focuses on the artist’s ongoing Kassetten (cassettes) series, initially begun in 2012. Spanning back to 1996, the book features abundant documentation of the various manifestations of the works, visual references, and other recent sculptures as well as texts by Lulu co-founder Chris Sharp.
Essay #1 in the series by S*I*G Verlag. Designed in collaboration with Sara De Bondt. Edited by Megan Francis Sullivan.
Rereading Appropriation reconsiders the artistic strategy of appropriation through later elaborated theories of affect, to explore how an understanding of ‘reciprocal investment’ reconfigures appropriation as an act that is based in connecting, acknowledging and being porous to material. Rereading Appropriation compiles texts read in the sister reading groups of If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution during its Edition V – Appropriation and Dedication (2013–2014).
Published on the occasion of Daniel Gustav Cramer’s exhibition Coasts, as part of Art Basel Parlours, 2016. Curated by Samuel Leuenberger.
Coasts, a sound installation placed in the first-floor rooms of a townhouse currently undergoing renovation, is Cramer’s first presentation of his archive of recordings taken in various coastal regions spanning the continents from Darwin, Australia to Ericeira, Portugal to Santa Monica, California. The architecture of the building creates a purely individual experience for the visitor who can listen to a singular recording or, by walking through the spaces, experience the overlap of a multitude of recordings.