This book, in the tradition of the famous Reclam book series, documents Christopher Williams’ contribution to the exhibition We Call It Ludwig. The Museum Is Turning 40!. With a text by Christopher Williams.

Produced on the occasion of Yng­ve Ho­len Horses, 1 September–16 September 2018, Kunsthalle Düssseldorf.

The star­ting point of the se­ries Ro­se Pain­ting is the rims of fi­ve dif­fe­rent SUV mo­dels. Their iso­la­ted cores we­re 3D scan­ned, sca­led to a dia­me­ter of two me­ters, and mil­led in cross-la­mi­na­ted tim­ber. The shift in si­ze and chan­ge of ma­te­ri­als, from alu­mi­num to wood, makes the works re­call the wa­gon wheels of his­to­ri­cal hor­se-drawn car­ria­ges or sta­ge­coa­ches. In their de­li­be­ra­te non-func­tio­na­li­ty, they par­ti­cu­lar­ly em­pha­si­ze the or­na­men­tal qua­li­ty and point to an en­t­i­re spec­trum of con­cen­tri­cal­ly de­si­gned ele­ments, from the ro­se pain­ting style to the Go­t­hic ro­se win­dow.

To­ge­ther wi­th the Ja­pa­ne­se pho­to­gra­pher Sa­to­shi Fu­ji­wa­ra (*1984 in Ko­be, Ja­pan, li­ves and works in Ber­lin), Ho­len has pro­du­ced an ar­tist’s book for the ex­hi­bi­ti­on. In it, Ho­len and Fu­ji­wa­ra, who is known for his ex­tre­me clo­seups and sen­si­ti­vi­ty to struc­tu­res, com­bi­ne their in­te­rest in sur­faces and ap­pearan­ces.

“The Almanack of Breath tells the story of two demons, one of whom exists in Medieval texts and one who I invented as a contemporary rebuttal to the first, nasty one. Against Tutivillus, also known as the Recording Demon, I write the tale of a nameless creature, an invisible and inaudible allegorical figure of Listening. Against the punitive, eavesdropping and misogynist Tutivillus, she promotes an ethics of listening by collecting and donating different forms of breath to those who need it.

The text continues in the form of a month-by-month almanac, each of the twelve ‘Seasons of Breath’ holding advice on the type of breath—a gasp, or yawn or a sigh for example—that the reader should take care to listen for.

Illustrations of each Season, and the introduction, are by Collette Rayner. Many of the drawings she completed very quickly, as I read the text aloud to her.”—Ash Kilmartin, 2018

Produced on the occasion of Laurie Parsons: A Body of Work 1987 at Museum Abteiberg, 15 April–8 September, 2018.

American artist Laurie Parsons (born 1959 in Mount Kisco, New York) was active with a number of exhibitions in the late 1980s and early 1990s and then transitioned away from the art world with consistent and determined gestures of commitment toward something else. A significant body of work was made in 1987 and shown in separate exhibitions at Lorence-Monk Gallery in New York in 1988 and Galerie Rolf Ricke in Cologne in 1989, after which the entire exhibition was purchased by a private German collection. Recently rediscovered and acquired by Gaby and Wilhelm Schürmann, it consists of found objects, mostly from around Parsons’s New Jersey studio—detritus from roads, natural and industrial wastelands. The words “a body of work” invoke Parsons’s terminology in a title-less exhibition that, interestingly enough, did not contain the word “installation.” The artist’s avoidance of this word is probably a key to understanding her attitude. The status of the found objects was shown as-is. As things from the street. Each one individually. Valuable in its origin and strong in its presence, “as strong as a work of art.”—L. Parsons

Includes a reprinted text by Renate Puvogel and a new essay by Maxwell Graham.

Produced on the occasion of Nicholas Mangan – Termite Economies, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, 4 August–1 September, 2018. Unbound section of proposed forthcoming publication. Text by S.T Lore and designed by Ziga Testen.

The starting point of Mangan’s exhibition, Termite Economies (Phase 1) is an anecdote that the CSIRO researched termite behaviour in the hope that the insects might one day lead humans to gold deposits; a proposal to exploit the natural activity of termite colonies for economic gain. In this exhibition, Mangan combines footage he filmed on location in Western Australia, alongside archival video and table-mounted sculptures, to speculate on the use of termites as miners and to construct a narrative that parallels human, social, ecological, and economic activity. At the core of this investigation, Mangan ruminates on how capitalism puts nature to work. Using a 3D printer, plaster and soil, Mangan has created models that hybridise mining infrastructure with termite architecture to form speculative termite mining infrastructures.

Artist publication by Zarouhie Abdalian in collaboration with Julie Peeters detailing Abdalian’s solo exhibition at LAXART in 2017, curated by Micki Meng. The catalog centers around seven tools and tool heads (titled: brunt) and several casts of the worked surface of a long derelict chalk mine (titled: from chalk mine hollow). Tara McDowell in the accompanying text describes the work as “near-future monuments to our own self-made epoch, the Anthropocene.” With texts by Joseph Rosenzweig and Tara McDowell. Design: Julie Peeters.