The first total survey of Jef Geys’ work. Art critics commonly describe the work of Belgian artist Jef Geys (1934–2018) as “unruly, and impossible to categorize in conventional art-historical categories.” Despite Geys’ subversive and critical attitude towards the art world, this ambitious publication shows that his work is not only deeply engaged and socially critical but also funny and sensory.

Since the early 1960s Geys had compiled an archive of everything he considered part of his artistic practice in to form of his “List of Works” serving as his oeuvre’s index. With a total of 844 entries, Catalogue Raisonnable, is the first total survey of Jef Geys’ work. Through access to the artist’s archive, close collaboration with Geys’ next of kin, and thorough art-historical research, this publication offers a rare opportunity for understanding and appreciating the fascinating practice of one of Belgium’s greatest artistic figures.

Designed by Joris Kritis & Adriaan Van Leuven.

An in-depth look at the Shonandai Cultural Centre, one of the groundbreaking buildings in 1980s Japan and the masterpiece of Japanese architect Itsuko Hasegawa, presented in photographs and technical drawings. The Shonandai Cultural Centre was the first major public project of Itsuko Hasegawa. Shonandai belongs to a different time – the 1980s – and a different place, Japan, but it shares the desire of earlier generations to “overcome” modernism. Hasegawa achieves this in the most outlandish way, possible perhaps only in Japan in the 1980s. This is where the 1960s techno avant-garde comes full circle. Illustrated with photographs by Stefano Graziani, this book is part of the Everything without Content series by Kersten Geers, Jelena Pancevac and Joris Kritis and successor to previous books on Aldo and Hannie Van Eyck and Giancarlo de Carlo.

Aldo and Hannie van Eyck met as students of architecture and married in 1942, and worked together closely on most projetcs, interrupted only for a few years in the late 1970s. This book, part of the Everything series by Kersten Geers, presents 24 of their buildings in drawings (site, plans, sections and elevations) by students of the Academy of Architecture USI, Mendriso, as well as numerous photographs by Bas Princen. The presented buildings do not only include their canonized art brut architecture, but also their lesser known late work.

Designed by Joris Kritis.

Being at once a school and at the same time not a school, a workspace, the WT tends to want to comment on its own distinctive form of academic pursuit (by way of, amongst other outlets, these School Journals). And during this sometimes faltering, sometimes successful quest, I’ve often thought about Jacques Rancière’s Ignorant Schoolmaster. Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation, not least because it outlines an “intellectual adventure” whereby any hierarchy amongst the students and between them and their tutor dissolves.—Maxine Kopsa, ‘Editorial Considerations’ (excerpt)

Including the work of Guy de Cointet, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Scott Ponik, David Lieske, Stephen Willats, Na Kim, Morgan Fisher, Karl Nawrot, Boy Vereecken, Cecilia Costa, Joris Kritis, Julie Peeters.

Guy Mees used the enigmatic title Lost Space to describe two major bodies of work, distinct in origin and form, and separated by a gap of more than twenty years: the geometric objects and panels covered in lace created in the 1960s, and the works he started producing in the 1980s featuring colour paper cutouts pinned to walls. This publication is dedicated to a lesser-known chapter in this story: the writing process of a short text entitled, likewise, The Lost Space. An ambiguous manifesto for Mees’ work, the text went through a number of revisions, with Mees contributing suggestions, but never authoring it himself. This book reproduces eight extant versions of the text for the first time, in facsimile and typographic transcription. Edited by Lilou Vidal. Designed by Joris Kritis. Limited edition of 350 copies.

Guy Mees (1935–2003) is a Belgian artist whose oeuvre encompasses photographs, videos, sculptures, and fragile works on paper that combine formal rigor with delicacy and a conceptual approach. A leading figure of the Belgian avant-garde, Mees left behind a body of work that transgresses geometric abstraction, Minimalism, Conceptualism, and applied arts.

Guy Mees’s (1935–2003) photographs, videos, and above all his fragile works on paper are characterized by a formal rigor combined with sensitivity and delicacy. The uniqueness of his oeuvre lies precisely in its avoidance of conventional aesthetics and discursive classifications. A leading figure of the Belgian avant-garde, Mees left behind an outstanding body of work that transgresses geometric abstraction, Minimalism, Conceptualism, and applied art.

The Weather is Quiet, Cool, and Soft is published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition at Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (February 1–April 8, 2018), and at Mu.ZEE, Ostend (November 25, 2018–March 10, 2019). Borrowed from a note the artist jotted down on one of his works on paper, the title pays homage to the atmospheric impermanence of Mees’s works, as well as his infra-ordinary, relativistic, and poetic approach.

Edited by Lilou Vidal. Texts by François Piron, Fernand Spillemaeckers, Lilou Vidal, Wim Meuwissen, Dirk Snauwaert, Micheline Szwajcer. Copublished with Kunsthalle Wien. Designed by Joris Kritis.

Lilou Vidal, curator of the exhibition and François Piron, art critic, curator and editor, to discuss Guy Mees’ work here.