Club Univers
Chus Martínez
Co-published by Sternberg Press, Berlin & Institut Kunst at the FHNW Academy of Art and Design, Basel, 2017, 88 pages (b/w ill.), 11.8 × 18 cm, English
Price: €12 (Temporarily out of stock)

A collection of notes written along the years by Spanish curator and Head of Institut Kunst in Basel Chus Martínez. Aimed at her students, this notebook gathers personal thoughts on artists who inspire Martínez’s ongoing practice.

“I’ve been writing these notes continuously for years but I never thought about publishing them. These pages gather some thoughts on artists who continue to be a source of motivation for me to invest in complexity and who also all possess a rare sense of humor. I write these texts mostly at the end of a working day or in the very early morning, which for me are not the hours for argumentation. They expose no foreseeable line of research or an unequivocal sequence of arguments. However, through continuous exchange with the students at the Institute of Art of the FHNW Academy of Arts and Design in Basel, I came to the conclusion that it would be useful to publish this peculiar research as a strange textbook. Its sole goal is to motivate the students to keep our conversation going and to further open this possibility up to others.

These pages attribute an incredible intensity to certain artistic practices; they entangle personal passages with an interest in artists I would love for you to fall for too: Melquiades Herrera (1949–2003), Pedro Pietri (1944-2004), Federico Manuel Peralta Ramos (1939–1992), Jorge Bonino (1935–1990), and many others who aren’t included, at least not yet…”

#2017 #chusmartinez #sternbergpress
In Part: Writings
Julie Ault
Published by Dancing Foxes Press, New York & Galerie Buchholz, Köln, 2017, 272 pages, hardcover w. dust jacket, 23.5 × 16 cm, English
Price: €28

Spanning more than three decades, “In Part” brings together a full spectrum of the New York–based artist, writer and activist Julie Ault’s published texts through selected extracts in a single volume. Reprinted in chronological sequence alongside a selection of full-length texts, this series of excerpts offers a timeline of Ault’s artistic development, longstanding political concerns and dynamic interpersonal affinities. The book is edited by Julie Ault and Nicolas Linnert and has an introductory text by Lucy R. Lippard. The book is published in collaboration of Dancing Foxes Press and Galerie Buchholz.

#2017 #dancingfoxespress #galeriebuchholz #julieault #lucylippard
Gold Dumps and Ant Hills
Moyra Davey
Published by Toupee Books, Berlin, 2017, 32 pages (duotone ill.), clothbound hardcover w/ postcard, 14 × 19 cm, English
Price: €25

Shot in South Africa in 1992, Moyra Davey’s Gold Dumps and Ant Hills is a series of black-and-white photographs of mounds left behind by two types of excavation—one human and one non-human. For Davey, the pairings of gold dumps and ant hills “invite not only our imagined associations but, as South African landscapes, our received, politically charged associations as well.” The photographs are presented here in book form for the first time. Designed by Dan Solbach.

Moyra Davey is an artist and writer who lives in New York. She has shown her work internationally, including participation in documenta 14. She is represented by greengrassi London, Galerie Buchholz Cologne/Berlin/New York, Wilfried Lentz Rotterdam, and John Goodwin Toronto.

#2017 #dansolbach #moyradavey
Substance
Mathias Poledna
Published by The Renaissance Society of Chicago, 2017, 132 pages
Price: €38

The Renaissance Society presents a major commission by Los Angeles-based artist Mathias Poledna. For this exhibition, Poledna has created an installation that juxtaposes a new moving image work with a comprehensive reimagining of the venue’s setting.

Poledna’s art most commonly takes the form of highly concentrated film works that unfold a complex tension between the visuals and their critical and cultural implications. His work, as Michael Bracewell writes, suggests “a form of conceptualism, philosophical in basis, which attempts to engage with paradox as a means of enquiry.” In Poledna’s films and the rigorously formal environments he creates for them, salient beauty and visual restraint collude in a viewing experience that encompasses both affect and detachment.

Poledna’s concise presentations underscore a mode of production in which he frequently involves specialist collaborators in order to articulate a highly specific frame of vision. The films draw on the artist’s panoramic range of interests, from the music of post-punk and a rainforest in Papua New Guinea to 1930s style animation, as in his seminal 2013 film, Imitation of Life. Although invariably newly produced, they often create the impression of having been found as they are, seemingly extricated from present-day or historic collective imaginaries.

#2017 #mathiaspoledna #michaelbracewell #therenaissancesocietyofchicago
Moving And Being Moved
Yvonne Rainer
Published by Roma Publications, 2017, 128 pages (colour ill.), 20 × 28 cm, English
Price: €25 (Temporarily out of stock)

Edited by Yvonne Rainer, this selection of texts and images by Rainer and various authors, offers a retrospective portrait of her work, focusing on some of her most notable performances and projects from both the late 1960s (Trio A, The Mind Is a Muscle) and since her return to dance with the White Oak Dance Project in 2000.

Rainer is known for her challengingly experimental and sometimes minimalist work as a dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker, which spearheaded the rise of postmodern dance. An essay by Rainer frames things from the perspective of an ageing dancer who is aware of her physical limitations. With a conversation between Rainer and dancer Trisha Brown.

#2017 #romapublications #yvonnerainer
Like a Woman: Essays, Readings, Poems
Quinn Latimer
Published by Sternberg Press, Berlin, 2017, 248 pages, 13.6 × 20.5 cm, English
Price: €19 (Temporarily out of stock)

Composed in the space between the page and live performance, Latimer’s recent essays and poems collected here examine issues of genealogy and influence, the poverty and privilege of place, architecture’s relationship to language, and feminist economies of writing, reading, and art making. Shifting between written language and live address, between the needs of the internal and the external voice, Like a Woman retrieves the refrain, the litany, and the chorus, exploring their serial ecstasies and political possibilities.

#2017 #quinnlatimer #samdegroot #sternbergpress