Published on the occasion of Dean Sameshima’s recent solo exhibition at Soft Opening, being alone is edited by Antonia Marsh, designed by Robert Milne, and features a newly commissioned essay from American writer, critic and poet Bruce Hainley.

In each of the twenty-five black and white photographs that comprise Dean Sameshima’s recent series being alone, the outline of a solitary viewer sits bathed in light emitting from the glowing screen of a Berlin porn theatre. These cinemas offer the kind of encounter that has been described as an “anonymous being-together”, a space wherein an individual can project not only his own desire and sexual fantasy onto the screen but disidentify with the confining projections of the external world.

Designed to protect its occupants from judgement and persecution, the artist enshrines these private rooms, continuing his documentation of the architecture and physical characteristics of queer spaces. While Sameshima atypically retains the presence of bodies in these images, with no identifying features revealed, his focus locates more deliberately on the anonymity of these individuals alongside the emptiness that surrounds them.

Paul Sietsema is an artist deeply engaged in the act of looking. For his third and newest project, Figure 3 (2008), Sietsema takes as inspiration the ethnographic objects that he has collected from various locations, including Africa, Indo-Asia, and the South Pacific region of Oceania. Situating Figure 3 in the broader context of Sietsema’s work of the past ten years, this far-ranging volume explores the artist’s unique approach to looking as well as the relationships among his drawings, object-making, and film. With an essay by Cornelia Butler and interview by Bruce Hainley.

A note about Jack Smith by Michael Krebber; I will not interpret Jack Smith. I will not interpret Jack Smith. I will not interpret Jack… by Felix Bernstein; I Danced with a Penguin by Enzo Shalom; Broadway Central Narco Moon: Jack Smith and Illegality by Branden W. Joseph; Vile Days: The Village Voice Art Columns, 1985–1988, Gary Indiana in conversation with Bruce Hainley and Sohrab Mohebbi; On the film Shake Down by Leilah Weinraub by Juliana Huxtable; On Nina Könnemann at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin by Megan Francis Sullivan; On Louise Lawler at 80WSE Gallery (NYU), New York by Nick Irvin; On Claire Fontaine at Reena Spaulings, Los Angeles by Anita Chari; On Afuma (Stefan Tcherepnin & Taketo Shimada) at H0L0, Ridgewood by Keith Connolly; On Park McArthur at MoMA, New York by Noah Barker; On the film Vital Behaviors by Ken Okiishi by Felix Bernstein; Garde-montée by Jeanne Graff; Last Summer (Hong Kong SAR) by Sony Devabhaktuni; A Cowboy Narrative by Bernadette Van-Huy; Visual Insert by Jack Smith, 35 mm color slides, I Danced with a Penguin, c. 1983.

Produced on the occasion of Portraits a solo exhibition by Ghislaine Leung displayed at Museum Abteiberg from 3 June–24 October, 2021, curated by Susanne Titz and Haris Giannouras. The exhibition comprised of works commissioned by Museum Abteiberg and produced over the duration of a year from 2020–21. The catalogue references the legendary box catalogues developed by previous museum director Johannes Cladders with Joseph Beuys in 1967. With essays from Bruce Hainley and Eleanor Ivory Weber.

You can see a round table discussion of the exhibition featuring Bruce Hainley, Fatima Hellberg & Susanne Titz and Haris Giannouras here.

Taking its title from the Elaine May’s 1987 film Ishtar, this group exhibition curated by Los Angeles-based critic Bruce Hainley touches on many of the same interests and dichotomies: a comedy that is political and analytical at the same time; an abstraction but also a representation; and a cultural production outside of much discourse. The catalogue traces the attempt to create an informed dialogue for artwork that evades easy classifications and readymade discussions of abstraction vs. representation. Featured artists include: Brian Calvin, Samara Caughey, Lecia Dole-Recio, Trisha Donnelly, Vincent Fecteau, Richard Hawkins, Larry Johnson, Patrick Hill, Cady Noland, Sturtevant.

Jill Johnston—cultural critic, auto/biographer, and lesbian icon—was renowned as a writer on dance, especially on the developments around Judson Dance and the 1960s downtown New York City scene, and later as the author of the radical-feminist classic Lesbian Nation (1973). This book collects thirty texts by Jill Johnston that were initially published in her weekly column for The Village Voice between 1960 and 1974. The column provided a format in which Johnston could dissolve distinctions between the personal, the critical, and the political. Her writing took turns and loops, reflecting its times and contexts, and set a stage for the emergence of Johnston as a public figure and self-proclaimed radical lesbian that defied any prescribed position.

Johnston’s original texts are accompanied by three new contributions by Ingrid Nyeboe, Bruce Hainley, and Jennifer Krasinski, as well as an appendix with archival material related to a panel Johnston organized in 1969, titled The Disintegration of a Critic: An Analysis of Jill Johnston. Edited by Fiona McGovern, Megan Francis Sullivan, Axel Wieder. Designed by HIT.

You can read more on Jill Johnston in Jennifer Krasinski’s Art in America article here.