In 1965, Jay DeFeo (1929–89) was evicted from her San Francisco apartment, along with The Rose, the two-thousand-pound painting that would make her legendary. The morning after her front window was sawed open to make way for the colossus, DeFeo attempted to salvage Estocada, a large-scale painting on paper stapled directly to her hallway wall. Unfinished and never documented, the little-known piece was ripped down in chunks, saved, and reanimated years later in the studio through photography, photocopy, collage, and relief.

Rip Tales traces Estocada’s material history, woven into this narrative are other Bay Area stories that likewise privilege transformation, multiplicity, intuition, and absence. Drawing on interviews and personal experience, curator Jordan Stein explores these themes in the work and lives of artists Zarouhie Abdalian, April Dawn Alison, Ruth Asawa, Lutz Bacher, Bruce Conner, Dewey Crumpler, Trisha Donnelly, and Vincent Fecteau.

A talk with Jordan Stein and Hilton Als about the book here.

Curatorial Feelings is a book that collects arts practitioner Eloise Sweetman’s writing from the past decade, written on the occasion of exhibitions she curated, written on and for individual artworks, as well as for public talks. Sweetman often wrote while, and not before, the artworks were on view. The time of retrospection, and of being with artworks, imbues her language. Moving between prose and poetry, impressions and reflections, coursing through the writing is a commitment to senses, to subjectivity, to social responsibility.

Sweetman writes to the work of Malin Arnell, Gwenneth Boelens, Katarzyna Kobro, Charlotte Posenenske, Miyeon Lee, Arin Rungjang, Jo-ey Tang, Katie West, Zarouhie Abdalian, Ruth Buchanan, Sofia Caesar, Theo van Doesburg, Marcel Duchamp, Ian Kiaer, Lee Kit, Liu Chao-tze, Ma Qiusha, K.R.M. Mooney, Elena Narbutaitė, Kate Newby, Shanta Rao, Himali Singh Soin & David Soin Tapperser, and Louwrien Wijers.

Edited by Eloise Sweetman and Jo-ey Tang. Designed by Dongyoung Lee.

Produced on the occasion of the biennal The Lulennial, organized by Fabiola Iza and Chris Sharp at Lulu, Mexico City, a 9-square meter independent space in Mexico City, whose economy, “in the sense of doing a lot with a little or sometimes nothing at all,” is one of the founding principles.

With Zarouhie Abdalian, Francis Alÿs, Paola de Anda, Carl Andre, Billy Apple, Darren Bader, Pierre Bal-Blanc, Robert Barry, Graciela Carnevale, Ulises Carrión, Lygia Clark, Isaac Contreras, Marie Cool Fabio Balducci, Tania Pérez Córdova, Eduardo Costa, Christopher D’Arcangelo, Marcel Duchamp, Koji Enokura, Lucio Fontana, Fernanda Gomes, Alberto Greco, Simon Gabriel Greenberg, Matt Hinkley, Hi Red Center, Tehching Hsieh, Douglas Huebler, Stephen Kaltenbach, Yves Klein, Joseph Kosuth, Jirí Kovanda, Sol LeWitt, Lee Lozano, Jenine Marsh, Cildo Meireles, Robert Morris, Roman Ondák, Yoko Ono, Gabriel Orozco, Chantal Peñalosa, Goran Petercol, Kirsten Pieroth, Wilfredo Prieto, Ana Roldán, Lotty Rosenfeld, Karin Sander, Ana Santos, Martín Soto Climent, Mladen Stilinovic, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Isidoro Valcárcel Medina, Goran Trbuljak, Lawrence Weiner, B. Wurtz, Lin Yilin, La Monte Young.

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.

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.

Published on the occasion of Mechanisms, a group exhibition at CCA Wattis Institute (October 12, 2017 to February 24, 2018). It includes an essay by curator Anthony Huberman as well as contributions from artists Zarouhie Abdalian, Terry Atkinson, Lutz Bacher, Eva Barto, Neil Beloufa, Patricia L. Boyd, Jay DeFeo, Harun Farocki, Richard Hamilton, Aaron Flint Jamison, Jacob Kassay, Garry Neill Kennedy, Louise Lawler, Park McArthur, Jean-Luc Moulène, William Pope.L, Charlotte Posensenke, Cameron Rowland, and Danh Vo. Trisha Donnelly designed the cover.

Instead of documenting the exhibition, the catalogue reflects and expands on some of its core ideas. Designed by Scott Ponik and Julie Peeters, the book’s fabrication makes use of different printing techniques and “machines,” including an offset printer, a letterpress, and thermography, as well as a wide range of natural and synthetic paper stocks. Contributions by each of the exhibiting artists range from photo essays, theoretical essays, video transcripts and stills, interviews, and works designed especially for the page.