A Void
Henri Chopin, Guy de Cointet, Channa Horwitz 
Published by Spector Books, Leipzig, 2013, 136 pp. (colour & b/w ill.), 22.5 × 28.5 cm, English/German
Price: €48

Produced on the occasion of A Void: Henri Chopin, Guy de Cointet, Channa Horwitz at Kunsthalle Düsseldorf 16 May – 30 June, 2013.

Each in their own way, Henri Chopin, Guy de Cointet and Channa Horwitz dedicated themselves to analyzing systems of meaning and working out their rules-based connections, transforming or reinventing them in the process. Horwitz’s drawings are indebted to the aesthetics of notation, the close link between idea, process and work. With the help of a set of rules she creates complex structures whose vibrating pictorial structure masks their underlying logic. Chopin, a key figure in French visual poetry and sound poetry—explored the relationship of chaos and order with his typewriter poems while de Cointet left behind numerous drawings full of codes and puzzles, in which he transformed meanings into visual signifiers.

#2013 #channahorwitz #concretepoetry #guydecointet #henrichopin #spectorbooks
Ringgummimatte
Micha Zweifel
Published by Spector Books, Leipzig, 2021, 84 pages, spiral bound hardcover (colour & b/w ill.), 23.6 × 32.2 cm, English / German
Price: €28

Micha Zweifel is an artist who works with what he finds in his surroundings: materials, concepts, and motifs—the flotsam of cultural remnants whose use, identity, or meaning have become unstable, but still shape where and how we live. Ringgummimatte is a montage of such “finds,” showing Zweifel’s work alongside photos and conversations from recent years. It features texts by artist and writer Sabrina Chou, journalist Michel Rebosura, writer and art historian Vivian Sky Rehberg, poet Lisa Robertson, curator Eveline Suter, as well as an email exchange between Christoph Zweifel and the artist. Writer and editor Matthew Stadler has captioned each image in the book with a quote from Zweifel’s library, forming a composition of what is adjacent to Zweifel’s work, like footsteps in a neighbors apartment.

Ringgummimatte is designed by Studio Krispin Heé (Krispin Heé, Tim Wetter) and published on the occasion of Micha Zweifel’s ongoing exhibition Zur Sackgasse 4. Stock (5 December, 2020–27 June, 2021) at Kunstmuseum Luzern and the Manor Kunstpreis Zentralschweiz Luzern 2020.

#2021 #michazweifel #spectorbooks
Dust: The Plates of the Present
Published by Spector Books, Leipzig, 2020, 304 pages (colour & b/w ill.), 17.5 × 25 cm, English / French
Price: €26

The plates of the present is a project based on the photographic process of photogram. In February 2013, artist Thomas Fougeirol and artist/curator Jo-ey Tang set up a photographic darkroom(nicknamed DUST) in Ivry-sur-Seine, bordering Paris. Since then, 130 participants have come through The plates of the present, comprising over 1,000 prints and a film. The project is named after the beginning of a sentence in William Henry Fox Talbot’s The Pencil of Nature (published in six installments between 1844 and 1946), the first photographically illustrated book. An exhibition was curated by Sonel Breslav at Baxter St/Camera Club of New York, New York in 2015 with a book published by Blonde Art Books and Secretary Press. A second exhibition was curated by Jo-ey Tang and Thomas Fougeirol at Galerie Praz Delavallade, Paris in 2017. At the end of 2018, the entire archive entered the permanent collection of Centre national d’art et de culture Georges-Pompidou, Paris.

#2020 #abstractphotography #carrieyamaoka #joeytang #joyepisalla #photography #spectorbooks #thomasfougeirol
Fehler lesen. Korrektur als Textproduktion
Tabea Nixdorff
Published by Spector Books, Leipzig, 2019, 80 pages (colour & b/w ill.), 21 × 29.7 cm, German
Price: €18

Fehler lesen. Korrektur als Textproduktion is an essay on textual errors and a personal quest to find them. Misprints demonstrate the vulnerability of a text. Here we catch a glimpse of the pre- and post-production phases, work that is to a large extent invisible. Thus, the juxtapositions of words that are printed and those that are intended (errata) reveal far more than a simple genealogy of wrong vs. right: they document vestiges of the work done in the shadows, the wrestling with language. Displacements, reconstructions, and lacunae become visible. In her essay Tabea Nixdorff tracks the social, linguistic, media, and poetic dimensions produced by correction and textual criticism. Who does the correcting and what traces does this mostly invisible work leave behind? What shifts in meaning do mistakes trigger? To what extent does the medium play a part in authoring the text.

#2019 #spectorbooks #tabeanixdorff