This catalogue explores some of the pivotal themes of the artist’s research, from her interest in crossing and redefining the border between interior and exterior to the relationship between the aesthetic object and its institutional context.

For her first institutional show in Italy, organised by Fondazione Furla at the GAM – Galleria d’Arte Moderna, in Milan, Nairy Baghramian began with the specific urban setting of the GAM, that is, an English garden open to adults only when accompanied by children. The contrasting impressions created by a context that evokes the reassuring and playful world of childhood, while at the same time engendering a sense of frustration through its limited accessibility, provide the inspiration for Misfits. Designed by Lorenzo Mason Studio.

On the levels of both form and content, Breath Holding Spell unmistakably harks back to Bruce Nauman’s 1970 artist’s book LA AIR, whose eight monochrome pages present photographs of the atmosphere, illustrating the widely varying hues of the air over L.A.

It inspired this artist’s book by Nairy Baghramian, which features variations on a single photographic motif: no more than a cropped detail of a tightly packed standing crowd of people is visible in Tight Sluice. Monochrome pages that reprise the colors of their attire appear in rhythmical alternation with the pictures.

The artist has autographed the books on the back cover, again quoting Nauman, though his signature was a printed facsimile.

With illustrations by Nairy Baghramian, Julian Göthe, Shahryar Nashat, Henrik Olesen, Danh Vo.

Dominic Eichler (born 1966 in Ballarat, Australia, lives and works in Berlin) is an art critic, artist, musician, curator, and co-founder of the contemporary art space Silberkuppe. He is also a contributing editor of Frieze. In 2005 he was awarded the AdKV Prize for Art Criticism. In 1999 he co-founded the pop band Dominique, which has released three albums.

Pamhplet produced on the occasion of Nairy Baghramian’s solo show Déformation Professionnelle, 26 November, 2016–19 February, 2017.

Déformation Professionnelle was a new production that built on 18 sets of works in the artist’s oeuvre from 1999 to 2016. Baghramian alludes to existing work and associated elements, from discarded ideas to working material. In this exhibition she was, in her own words, “surveying the survey”. By refusing to show what exists and nevertheless reconsider it in the ‘new’, the exhibition connected to fundamental questions about progress and economy and asks when something ceases to exist, and how something new comes into being.

Contributions by Manuela Ammer, Julie Ault, Monika Baer, Nairy Baghramian, Gerry Bibby, Jennifer Bornstein, Pauline Boudry & Renate Lorenz, Dragana Bulut, Katarina Burin, Françoise Cactus, Leidy Churchman, Ann Cotten, Juan Davila, Dominic Eichler, Elmgreen & Dragset, Yusuf Etiman, Isa Genzken, Susanne Ghez, Margaret Harrison, Daniel Herleth, Annette Kelm, Janette Laverrière, Adam Linder, Lee Lozano, Charlie Le Mindu, Shahryar Nashat, Gina D’Orio, Stephen Prina, Dean Spade, Ming Wong.

The Jahresring series is one of the longest continually published annual journals for contemporary art in Germany. The 61st edition is a reader and visual sampler with contributions from visual artists, writers, poets, musicians, choreographers, and designers. Bringing together a discursive array of forms and timbres, it takes an intertextual and interdisciplinary approach to exploring some contemporary cultural resonances with respect to gender and sexuality. In this sense, a “PS” or postscript might be understood as a place where relations or realities not explicitly stated in the main body of any given text, but nevertheless underpinning them, are revealed. A “PS” is a place of interpersonal agency; a compelling textual gesture that might add a “by the way” and an “also” and a “you know what we’re really talking about.” By its nature, a “PS” is contextualized and contextualizing. Though it may parade as the last word, it never is.

The Jahresring is published annually on behalf of Kulturkreis der deutschen Wirtschaft im BDI e.V.

In his catalogue essay, curator Anthony Huberman explains that the works in this exhibition ‘reflect on what it could mean to contest the regime of the machine’. That is, they question the worship of usefulness in modern scientific civilisation, which is refused or even ridiculed by each piece on show. It’s a strong concept, and potentially extends to how the works are placed in the labyrinthine space of the Secession. If the point is to produce friction, then the disorganisation of Other Mechanisms—the inability of its parts to add up to a coherent whole—is a paradoxical form of success.

Concept: Anthony Huberman. Texts: Jennifer Alexander, Franco Berardi, Benjamin H. Bratton, Gilles Châtelet, Gilles Deleuze, Keller Easterling, Vilém Flusser, Sigfried Gideon, Martin Heidegger, Anthony Huberman, K.G. Hultén, Maurizio Lazzarato, Pamela Lee, Les Levine, Jean-François Lyotard, Robert King Merton, Meredith Meredith, Lewis Mumford, Gerald Raunig, Nishant Shah, Robert Snowden, Joseph Vogl. Images: Zarouhie Abdalian, Lutz Bacher, Nairy Baghramian, Eva Barto, Patricia L. Boyd, Nina Canell & Robin Watkins, Jay DeFeo, Trisha Donnelly, Harun Farocki, Howard Fried, Jacob Kassay, Garry Neill Kennedy, Frederick Kiesler, Pope.L, Louise Lawler, Sam Lewitt, Park McArthur, Jean-Luc Moulène, Cameron Rowland, Sturtevant, Danh Vo.