Beyond the Box
Dohmen Collection
 | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | Christoph Balzar, Renate Puvogel, Oliver Zybok |
| Design | Axel Baltzer, Cologne |
| Cover | Hardcover |
| Size | 24 x 28 cm |
| Pages | 206 |
| Illustrations | 135 |
| Language(s) | German, English |
| ISBN | 978-3-96912-023-1 |
Breaking the Mold of Convention
Presenting installations, sculptures, objects, and paintings from Mexico, Cuba, West Africa, Israel, Bulgaria, Russia, South Korea, and Japan, rounded out by extraordinary works from the U.S. and Europe, this selection from the Dohmen Collection features artists from countries that did not typically register on “Western” art radars until fifteen years ago. It was the seminal documenta 11 (2002), curated by a team led by Okwui Enwezor, that ushered in a departure from the contemporary art world’s entrenched geopolitical ideas. This book showcases a treasure that has long been ahead of its time yet did not attract public attention: the private collection of Werner Dohmen, a physician in Aachen. It includes works by Mariana Castillo Deball, Wim Delvoye, Jimmie Durham, Diango Hernández, Rodney McMillian, Pavel Pepperstein, Nora Turato, Haegue Yang, and other artists who continue to provoke audiences, ask probing questions, and prompt fresh thinking.
Dr. med. Werner Dohmen has been head of the board of Neuer Aachener Kunstverein since 1988. In addition to building his own collection, he has been a committed supporter of the intercultural project No es arte, which advocates for the return of goldwork of the pre-Colombian Tairona people that was stolen from sacred sites during the colonial conquest of South America.
More books
-
Stephen Buckley
Close Cousins. Paintings48€ Add to cartThe Artist’s First Publication in more than Thirty Years
For more than forty years Stephen Buckley (b. 1944, Leicester) has concerned himself with addressing the major themes of the twentieth century through a personal style oscillating between the matière of Kurt Schwitters, the dandyism of Francis Picabia and the intellectual rigour of Marcel Duchamp. He takes the two most basic components of a conventional painting (canvas and stretcher), and makes multi-dimensional constructions, joins groups of single canvases together in overlapping structures, makes shaped canvases, cuts a stretcher with a variegated edge, stitches and weaves together strips of canvas, patches pieces of canvas onto another support, and adds cardboard tubing, rope, found objects and cut out shapes. In the 1970’s and 1980’s, Buckley saw extended prominence in the art press, starting with the artist being described as “the Punk Rock of contemporary painting” and ending with him gaining the title of “the ubiquitous Stephen Buckley”. There is now a large portfolio of themes, references, motifs and symbols which are continually reworked and reinvented. Since then, he has made some of his most compelling paintings, lush pop canvases full of symbols and colour, a far cry from the pared-down, industrial feel of some of his early works.
-
Wyatt Kahn
Paintings and Sculptures36€ Add to cartWyatt Kahn’s (b. New York, 1983; lives and works in New York) work hovers between two and three dimensions, reviving aspects of American 1960s Minimal Art. In the tradition of minimalist abstraction, his multipart paintings seem devoid of content, but their construction is a sophisticated choreography of geometric shapes. Instead of delineating them on the canvas itself, he transforms them into physical elements composed of canvas stretched over strips of wood that he mounts on the wall as reliefs, making the latter an integral part of the composition. Working on the interface between painting and sculpture, the artist also references Ellsworth Kelly’s single and multiple shaped canvases.
Wyatt Kahn’s works are held by major collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Dallas Museum of Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo.
-
FREIGEISTER
FRAGMENTS OF AN ART SCENE IN LUXEMBOURG AND BEYOND35€ Add to cartThinking Otherwise—the Mudam in Luxembourg at Fifteen
A free spirit, Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, is someone who “thinks otherwise than is expected of him in consideration of his origin, surroundings, position, and office, or by reason of the prevailing contemporary views” (Human, All Too Human,1878). As the German philosopher saw it, one must seek to become “untimely” and remain a “stranger” to one’s time in order to question its premises. This view to states of alienation unites the positions of fourteen young Luxembourgish artists in Freigeister, the publication accompanying the celebrations on occasion of the fifteenth anniversary of the Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean.
In recent years, Luxembourg’s art scene has grappled in a wide variety of ways with the challenges that come with the small yet economically successful country’s ongoing transformation. Charting realities between the familiar and the unknown, the artists featured in Freigeister employ photography, painting, and installation as well as film, sculpture, printmaking, and performance art to paint a carefully considered but by no means dispassionate portrait of today’s society in an effort to build bridges between identity and the future.
The book presents works by Yann Annicchiarico, Laurianne Bixhain, Aline Bouvy, Marco Godinho, Sophie Jung, Catherine Lorent, Filip Markiewicz, Karolina Markiewicz & Pascal Piron, Claudia Passeri, Daniel Reuter, Nina Tomàs, Daniel Wagener, and Jeff Weber.
-
Ilit Azoulay
Facts and Tales. Truth be Told120€ Add to cartIn an era in which multiple perspectives and oral histories are increasingly vital, Facts and Tales—Truth Be Told delves into the haunting work of Ilit Azoulay. The artist, who was born in Jaffa in 1972, transforms objects, archives, and museum holdings into vessels, challenging traditional hierarchies of knowledge. In her most recent solo exhibition Mere Things at the Jewish Museum, New York, Azoulay presents works that probe the delicate balance between factual representation and nuanced storytelling.
The publication accompanying the exhibition includes archival pages, the artist’s notes, and depictions of the works as well as an introduction by curator Shira Backer and an essay by the art critic, curator, and writer Sarit Shapira, who passed away in 2018. Titled Houses of Junk and Specters: On Ilit Azoulay’s Early Works, it underscores the importance of honoring both factual accuracy and oral histories and invites readers to explore the complex interplay between concrete evidence and the rich and nuanced stories.
Azoulay has devised a singular method to shed light on the blanks in hegemonic narratives and expose them. As though to produce an extortion letter, she clips her pictures from archival materials and photographs of the walls of abandoned buildings and composes them in collages interweaving a multiplicity of views. The resulting works question the exclusive truth claim of museum expertise and reveal its constructed quality. The catalog of her works, designed as a box replete with texts and images, reflects this approach, aiming to dismantle established narratives and open up diverse perspectives.
Box containing 6 different standalone publications, limited edition of 500 copies
-
Stephan Kaluza & Dieter Nuhr
Transit42€ Add to cartLandscapes in a Dialogue between Painting and Photography
At first glance, Stephan Kaluza’s (b. 1964, Bad Iburg; lives and works in Düsseldorf) photorealist paintings might be still lifes, portraits of pristine nature. Yet they actually show battlefields and other scenes of past horrors. The idyll in his pictures positively appeals to our vigilance to resist the impression of profound peace. The same ambiguity lies at the heart of the photographs of Dieter Nuhr (b. 1960, Wesel; lives and works in Ratingen). Nuhr, who is also widely known as a comedian, has contributed pictures that are carefully focused renditions of seemingly serendipitous discoveries from his travels in Nepal, Bolivia, India, and Sudan. In their timelessness, Nuhr’s photographs are akin to the locales in Kaluza’s works, which, disburdened of the heavy weight of their histories, reemerge as straightforward natural landscapes. The lavishly illustrated two-volume edition presents the fruits of a collaboration between two artists united by their shared preoccupation with the dialectic of ephemerality and permanence.
-
Rooted
Female Brazilian Artists28€ Add to cartThe book Rooted. Female Brazilian Artists, accompanies the eponymous exhibition at Brainlab/Munich, which is open until the end of September 2025. The works of the 16 artists come from the collection of Sergio Linhares and Stefan Vilsmeier. The collectors present this selection hoping to illuminate important and difficult themes such as, among others, discrimination, displacement, and violence but also to remind of our shared rootedness in nature. “Art has no obligation to comfort us; it can challenge, disrupt and remind us that our coexistence is fragile.” The volume shows installation views along with close-ups of the individual works and it includes short texts for each artist along with an essay by curator Tereza de Arruda.
Artists: Marlene Almeida, Azuhli (Luiza Diogo Veras), Tarsila do Amaral, Beatrice Arraes, Carmezia Emiliano, Sonia Gomes, Iêda Jardim, Lucia Laguna, Laura Lima, Rosilene Luduvico, Rosana Paulino, Solange Pessoa, Paula Siebra, Luzia Simons, Nádia Taquary, Alexsandra Ribeiro, Larissa de Souza
-
Billy Al Bengston
Paintings & Watercolors48€ Add to cartThe First Monograph on the Californian Pop Artist Since More Than Thirty Years
Billy Al Bengston (b. 1934, Dodge City; lives and works in Venice, California, and Honolulu, Hawaii) is the very personification of the cheerful, carefree attitude towards life in California – with his work as well as his person: a former surfer and motorcycle racer, an extravagant artist and key figure of West Coast Pop Art. After studying at the California College of Arts and Crafts and the Otis Art Institute, he exhibited at the legendary Ferus Gallery in 1957 and was the central figure among a group of artists that included Frank Gehry, Edward Kienholz, Ed Ruscha, and Ken Price. BAB, as he apostrophizes himself, inserts car and motorcycle parts as motifs into his otherwise abstract paintings, using lacquer and spray paint instead of oil, and aluminum panels with at times dented surfaces instead of the traditional canvas. Art and lifestyle combine to create the individual “Bengston iconography” of California Cool.
-
Fahar Al-Salih
Beyond Fairy Tales39€ Add to cartBridges between East and West
The protection and sense of belonging one feels where one is at home, and what it is like to lose both of them: these are central concerns in the art of Fahar Al-Salih (b. Belgrade, 1964; lives and works in Karlsruhe). Having grown up in Kuwait, where a classical education in visual art was inconceivable, Al-Salih came late to his métier; Markus Lüpertz was among his teachers, and he completed his education in Hermann Nitsch’s master class. Seeing himself as a “bridge-builder” between the cultures of the Arab world and Europe, Al-Salih probes the different lived realities in which his itinerant biography has been set. No more linear than his path through life, his oeuvre is defined by subjects to which he keeps returning in a kind of cyclical motion. This publication offers unprecedented insight into Al-Salih’s creative approach and his articulations of individual yearnings, the comforts of safety, and political and social upheavals. His work achieves a deft interweaving of global perspectives and migrant realities.
-
Sammlung Marx
40 Werke29€ Add to cartThis is the German edition, follow here for the English edition
- Release November 2025
Simone Haack
NEW MAGICAL REALISM44€ Add to cartTalking about magical realism today, we typically think of the literary genre. Yet when Franz Roh coined the term, he was referring to a tendency in German visual art in the years before the rise of fascism. What marked a major departure from Expressionism and abstraction has seen a renaissance in the New Magical Realism pioneered by Simone Haack since the turn of the millennium, now framed by a comparable geopolitical situation. The influence of Giorgio de Chirico and his pittura metafisica is unmistakable in Haack, as are those of the New Objectivity, Kafkaesque painting, and the metaphysical dimension of Surrealism. One of the most eminent artists of our time.
-
Nicola Staeglich
Color Light Matter Mind36€ Add to cart“This painting springs from the ambition to paint color into the air.” (Ulrich Loock)
Nicola Staeglich’s (b. Oldenburg, 1970; lives and works in Berlin) work with color achieves a distinctive intermediate state between physical presence and atmospheric radiance. She stages painting now as a performative action with broad propositions in color, now as an installation in three dimensions with multilayered translucent painted panels. Color Light Matter Mind is Staeglich’s first monograph, setting recent works in relation to her earlier output (1998–2021). From the spiral-shaped reliefs to her Liquid Lights, the artist opens up a fresh dimension for color.
Nicola Staeglich studied at the Städelschule, Frankfurt, the Academy of Fine Arts Mainz, and the Chelsea College of Art, London. She won numerous fellowships and has been professor of painting/graphic art at the Hochschule der bildenden Künste Essen since 2015. Her work has been presented in numerous solo exhibitions in Germany and abroad and is held by private and public collections.
- out of stock
Drucksache Bauhaus
38€ Add to cartThe Early Years of the Weimar Print Workshop
At the Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar, the print workshop began operation in the spring of 1919 as the first workshop. Printmaking corresponded to the basic idea of the Bauhaus in that it realized the unity of art and craftsmanship in an ideal manner. With the groundbreaking project Bauhaus-Drucke. Neue Europaeische Graphik, four portfolios were created in which forty-five representatives of the European artistic avant-garde participated. In the announcement brochure of 1921, it stated: “The many who do not yet know about the work of the Bauhaus, and who cannot know, are to be made aware of us through this work.” The book presents the portfolios published between 1921 and 1924, together with other works printed at the Bauhaus by Lyonel Feininger, Wassily Kandinsky, and Oskar Schlemmer. The Stuttgarter Prolog also sheds light on the influence of Adolf Hölzel, whose students and later Bauhaus masters Oskar Schlemmer and Johannes Itten brought many of his ideas to the Bauhaus.
-
Kraftwerk
Innovation durch Transformation34€ Add to cartThe power plant in Rottweil, built in 1915 by the architect Paul Bonatz, looks back on a rich and interesting history: until 1976, it provided power to a gunpowder factory and, later, to a rayon manufacturer and at times also to the city of Rottweil. The façade design, the imposing perron leading up to the main entrance, and the tall chimneys still stand as testament to the modernist industrial structure’s erstwhile significance. Twenty years after the plant was taken out of service, the entrepreneurs Thomas Wenger and Mike Wutta with their event agency trend factory took over the dilapidated building with the surrounding premises and restored it, taking care to preserve its architectonic elements and the most important technical installations. (In the course of fifteen years, around 60,000 square feet of floorspace were reopened, with a special emphasis on the distinctive blend of morbid charm and contemporary design.) The power plant now serves the company as its headquarters and, more importantly, as a cutting-edge venue for concerts, congresses, and corporate events that has attracted clients and visitors from all over Baden-Württemberg and beyond.
-
Gregor Hildebrandt
A Blink of an Eye and the Years are Behind us48€ Add to cartFor the past two decades, Gregor Hildebrandt (b. Bad Homburg, 1974; lives and works in Berlin) has transformed analog audiotapes, cassettes, and records into collages, sculptures, panel paintings, and installations. Melding visual art with music, he has charted a complex creative vision crossing boundaries of medium and genre that he continually refines. Before using a tape, he records selected music—typically a single song—on it, whose lyrics he quotes in the work’s title. The artist’s output draws on his personal repertoire of bands that share a romantic narrative of loneliness and a melancholy keynote. The same attitude toward life is reflected in Hildebrandt’s work. The book offers insight into all periods of the artist’s oeuvre and is rounded out by archival materials from Hildebrandt’s studio, his project space Grzegorzki Shows, and the music label Grzegorzki Records that illustrate his creative process.
Gregor Hildebrandt studied at Kunsthochschule Mainz from 1995 until 1999 and at the Berlin University of the Arts from 1999 until 2002. He was a fellow of the Deutsches Studienzentrum in Venice in 2003 and worked in Vienna on a fellowship from the German Academic Exchange Service in 2005–06. He has been professor of painting and graphic art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich since 2015.
-
Ossian Fraser
DISSOLVING ACTS38€ Add to cartOssian Fraser (b. Edinburgh, 1983; lives in Munich and Berlin) molds and captures evanescent moments. Working with volatile materials such as water, dust, or light, the artist exposes the latent potentials of unremarkable situations in the urban fabric and natural scenes. A tunnel in a city, a rock face in the mountains become points of departure and elementary components of his site-specific interventions, which he records in photographs. The book is the first to offer comprehensive insight into Fraser’s artistic practice. Series of pictures showcasing his conceptual and poetic pieces alternate with conversations that not only demarcate the framework in which his art operates, but also touch on the great issues of our time.
Ossian Fraser studied fine arts and sculpture at the Alanus University of Arts and Social Sciences, Bonn, from 2006 until 2009 and at the Weißensee Kunsthochschule, Berlin, from 2009 until 2013, rounding out his education in Albrecht Schäfer’s master class in 2013–2014.
-
Sinje Dillenkofer
Archives Vivantes34€ Add to cartSinje Dillenkofer’s (b. Neustadt a.d.W., 1959) body of work ARCHIVES VIVANTES inquires into the idea of the “archive,” harnessing the means of visual art to allow us to see and perceive what the archive does not reveal. With staged photographs that combine conceptual rigor with a wide spectrum of creative techniques and devices, Dillenkofer’s pictorial essay turns the spotlight on specimens, artifacts, graphic art, and writings compiled by the explorer and naturalist Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) and the ornithologist Carlo von Erlanger (1872–1904). Examining the archive as a model of nature and reality as well as a mirror of “human nature,” the artist develops compositional ideas inspired by the peculiar features of the objects in the collections in visual analogies, pictorial spaces, and spatial compositions. Animals and plants that died long ago “in the service of science” are vividly embodied through the distinctive use of light and shadow. The resulting pictures consider the archive in a new context, framed by our complex relationships with nature, humankind, society and its values and ideals, circumstances and constellations of power. The pictures were taken in six German collection archives: at the Museum bei der Kaiserpfalz Ingelheim, the Naturhistorisches Museum Mainz, the Senckenberg Forschungsinstitut und Naturmuseum Frankfurt, the Stadtmuseum Berlin, and the Stuttgart State Museum of Natural History. Dillenkofer was the first artist to be invited by the Berlin State Library—Prussian Cultural Heritage to translate Humboldt’s American travel diaries into art.
Sinje Dillenkofer studied at the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design and has taught at universities and art academies. Her work is held by the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, and the Berlinische Galerie, among others.
- temporarily not available
CLARA MOSCH
and early art events in the GDRRead moreThe legendary producer-run gallery Clara Mosch and the artists’ group of the same title that gathered around it were founded in Karl-Marx-Stadt (today’s Chemnitz) in 1977 and existed until 1982. The catchy name was an acronym of the contributors’ last names: CLA = Carlfriedrich Claus, RA = Thomas Ranft and Dagmar Ranft-Schinke, MO = Michael Morgner, SCH = Gregor-Torsten Schade. As the founders of the first producers’ gallery in the GDR and creators of diverse oeuvres, the group’s artists rank among the foremost exponents of avant-garde art in East Germany. The book presents works of art, limited editions, and posters as well as photographs from the Ralf-Rainer Wasse archive in the collections of the Lindenau-Museum in Altenburg. One thematic focus is on Clara Mosch’s land-art happenings and plein-air pieces. The unconventional actions attest to the group’s stated objective of building greater awareness of the ongoing devastation of the local environment. Forty years after the fact, Clara Mosch’s work has lost none of its relevance and urgency.
-
Digitale Skulptur
Follow the unknown19,80€ Add to cartCrossing the BNorders of the Tangible
For the first time in art history a competition for the Digital Sculpture Award was announced. What is a digital sculpture anyway? Where are the boundaries between real and virtual worlds? With the advent of digitally generated images, the conditions for our perception and the parameters of our viewing habits are changed. Through the interactive involvement of the viewer, software-controlled image phenomena such as virtual environments lead to an exploring vision. The book presents and documents innovative works, which were conceived for the international competition, initiated by the Museum Ulm.
With works by Morehshin Allahyari, Giulia Bowinkel & Friedemann Banz, Jörg Brinkmann, George Crîngaşu, Nieves de la Fuente Gutiérrez, Marcel Karnapke, Leonard Kern, Nicolò Krättli + Jann Erhard, Martina Menegona and Marjan Moghaddam.
- Out of stock
Thomas Lehnerer
Freies Spiel44€ Read moreThe function of art in human existence
Throughout his short life, the Munich-based theologian and artist Thomas Lehnerer (1955–1995) did not take the existence of art for granted. In his writings, above all in Methode der Kunst (Methods of Art), he developed a concept of art in the continuation of key texts from the fields of aesthetics, cultural theory, and art history, which can also be found in his own artistic work. The small-format figurative sculptures by Lehnerer, as well as his drawings, watercolors, and early installations, follow theoretical premises and address comprehensive themes of human existence. The present volume documents his examination of human existence, which is deepened by the inclusion of cultural historical figures and idols.
- Release October 2025
Ernst Wilhelm Nay
Monograph (EN)68€ Add to cartThe Great German Artist’s Imposing Oeuvre
Ernst Wilhelm Nay (b. Berlin, 1902; d. Cologne, 1968) was one of the most interesting painters of European modernism. Spanning the decades from the 1930s to his death in Cologne in 1968, his output encompasses paintings as well as an abundance of works on paper. The new monograph surveys all periods in Nay’s oeuvre, from the “Fishermen paintings” to the striking late pictures, which leave no doubt about the artist’s outstanding gift for color. Nay’s evolution is embedded in the history and ideas of his time, on which he reflected in lectures, writings, and notes. The volume unlocks a wide spectrum of fresh insights into Nay’s life and art.
