





ELMGREEN & DRAGSET
READ
![]() | |
---|---|
Editor(s) | Elmgreen & Dragset |
Author(s) | Paul Benzon, Elmgreen & Dragset, Ivana Goossen, Christelle Havranek, Michal Přibáň, Barbora Ropková |
Design | Anežka Minaříková, Marek Nedelka |
Size | 19 x 26,5 cm |
Cover | Hardcover with Screenprint |
Pages | 260 |
Illustrations | 160 |
Language(s) | English |
ISBN | 978-3-96912-170-2 |
Throughout their careers, the artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset (Michael Elmgreen, b. Copenhagen, Denmark, 1961, and Ingar Dragset, b. Trondheim, Norway, 1969, live and work in Berlin) have eschewed the traditional “White Cube” exhibition format by creating large-scale installations and staging narrative situations in which autobiographical quotes blend with fictional stories and cultural references.
For the solo exhibition READ, Elmgreen & Dragset have transformed Kunsthalle Praha into a minimalist version of a modern public library to prompt reflections on our relationship with physical books and knowledge in the age of digital media. With new works by Elmgreen & Dragset as well as performances, videos, collages, paintings, and sculptures by other artists, READ also probes the relation between books and the making of art.
This richly illustrated publication documents the dynamic interaction between language, books, and art. With contributions from renowned scholars and a curatorial text by Elmgreen & Dragset.
More books
-
Birgitta Thaysen
Amor and Psyche24€ Add to cartAspects of Love
The fine art photographer Birgitta Thaysen (b. Gelsenkirchen, Germany, 1962; lives and works in Düsseldorf) studied with Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts and in Nan Hoover’s master class. Her photographic oeuvre encompasses urban motifs as well as likenesses of humans. In black-and-white portrait shots, she revisits the ancient myth of Amor and Psyche; embodiments of the yearning for love and the bafflements of the soul, the title characters have long been vehicles for variegated interpretations in visual art. Thaysen chose to shoot her portraits at Künstlerverein Malkasten, Düsseldorf, where the tale is present in an adaptation as a lavishly made wallpaper from the nineteenth century. She captured the protagonists lying on the floor, bedded on cushions, their heads upside down, for a vertiginous exploration of states of mind between self-abandonment and doubt.
Birgitta Thaysen studied art with Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts. Her conceptual photographic series have been seen by wide audiences in numerous exhibitions.
- Out of stock
Karsten Födinger
Toward a Radical Sculpture42€ Read moreHarnessing the Formative Power of Gravity
Typically made of basic construction materials, the works of Karsten Födinger (b. Mönchengladbach, Germany, 1978; lives and works in Berlin) bridge the divide between architecture and sculpture. Ideas relating to the durability and load-bearing capacity of structures are a key interest in his creative process. Besides large sculptures destined for interior settings, Födinger makes striking sculptural interventions in public spaces that take inspiration from the specific site and always engage with its historical and cultural context. Untainted by romanticism, his sculptures symbolize the approach to a foreseeable end that is hastened by the uncontrolled exploitation of the earth’s resources. With numerous illustrations and essays, this first extensive monograph on the artist presents a comprehensive survey of his sizable oeuvre.
Födinger’s works have been presented in numerous solo exhibitions, including at Antenna Space, Shanghai, and the Palais de Tokyo, Paris. In 2012, he was awarded the Baloise Art Prize at Art Basel Statements.
- Out of stock
Voré
Stückwerk Mensch18€ Read moreHistorically Anchored Installations with Current Political References
The sculptures by Voré (b. 1941 in Karlsruhe, lives and works in Ettlingen) reflect the artist’s examination of the conditions of human existence and the human state of mind. Finely polished forms, splinters, and rough fractures become a statement of content and at the same time constitute the formal tension of the respective object. The process of creation can be seen in the rough remaining parts and traces of the various tools. Parallel and closely related to this, drawings and collages are created as independent works or as components of installations. Formal impulses of the sculptural concept are taken up, graphically processed, and projected back into the sculptural work. The present volume presents projects from six decades with numerous illustrations.
-
The Art of Society
1900–194529€ Add to cartThe Collection of the Nationalgalerie, Berlin
The Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, the last building designed by Mies van der Rohe, has been closed a full six years for refurbishment. To mark its reopening the museum is presenting the highlights of its classical modernist collection under the title The Art of Society, 1900–1945. Visionary, critical, resigned or utopian, the paintings and sculptures bear witness to art’s dialogue with prevailing social conditions – from the German Empire to the First World War, the Weimar Republic and ultimately National Socialism. The catalogue documenting all works in the exhibition traces the major artistic tendencies during the first half of the 20th century in thirteen chapters. The Art of Society, 1900–1945 offers a renewed encounter with works by Edvard Munch, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Tamara de Lempicka, Lotte Laserstein, Otto Dix, George Grosz, Max Beckmann, and many others that is as captivating as it is illuminating.
Click here for the German edition.
-
Olaf Breuning
Paintings37€ Add to cartThe multimedia artist Olaf Breuning (b. Schaffhausen, Switzerland, 1970; lives and works in Upstate New York) has built a multifaceted oeuvre in installation art, photography, video, sculpture, drawing, and performance that questions contemporary reality. In a recent series of paintings, he playfully grapples with pressing concerns such as global warming. Like his earlier work, the new ensemble manifests his unorthodox approach. Breuning devised a unique painterly technique involving large-format wooden stamps with which he presses paint onto the canvas. The result is unconventional and fresh.
The publication—the first book dedicated exclusively to Breuning’s paintings—presents two dozen pictures as well documentation of the production process in the form of wooden stamps and sculptures. A dialogue between Katharina Beisiegel, director of the Kirchner Museum, Davos, and Gianni Jetzer, designated director of the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, delves into parallels and differences between the oeuvres of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Olaf Breuning.
Breuning trained as a photographer in Winterthur from 1988 until 1993 and completed a master class in photography from 1992 until 1995. In 1995–1996, he was enrolled in a postgraduate program at today’s Zurich University of the Arts. He has had solo exhibitions at the NRW-Forum, Düsseldorf; the Palais de Tokyo, Paris; the Chisenhale Gallery, London; and the Zentrum Paul Klee, Berne. He participated in the 2008 Whitney Biennial and has had work in group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Haus der Kunst, Munich; Kunsthalle Zürich; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Jeu de Paume, Paris; the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; the Whitechapel Gallery, London; and the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo.
-
Ed Sommer
Planetare Allianz22€ Add to cartA Monograph on the Pioneer of Op Art
The complex and extraordinary work of the Schwäbisch Gmünd-based artist Ed Sommer (1932–2015), who preferred to call himself a Bildsprachenmaler (painter of visual imagery), includes metal objects, formations of acrylic glass, gestural painting, erotic films, projection photography, dialogical portraits, and spoken texts. In 2014, the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe added a large number of works by the artist to its collection. This publication now presents the collection holdings, supplemented by further works by Ed Sommer.
Ed Sommer, together with his artist friend Marc Adrian, was one of the most important representatives of op and kinetic art and received considerable attention in the 1970s with his films and photographs.
-
100 Windows
Site-specific art installations at Berlin-Weekly project space28€ Add to cartEstablished in 2010 by Stefanie Seidl in a former gateway for horse-drawn carriages that is now enclosed by glazing at both ends, the project space BERLIN-WEEKLY offers the narrow yet exceptionally tall display space to artists as a highly visible public stage for installations that respond to the setting or site. Its unilateral orientation toward the street makes BERLIN-WEEKLY a creative intervention into the urban fabric that harnesses the shopwindow format. The book presents 100 selected window installations to illustrate the widely diverse ways in which individual artists have engaged with the venue, time and again transforming the unusually shaped small space.
With works by: Menno Aden, Alexandra Baumgartner, Isabelle Borges, Astrid Busch, Simon Faithfull, Moritz Frei, Max Frisinger, Wolfgang Flad, Dagmara Genda, Andreas Greiner & Armin Keplinger, Sabine Groß, Marc van der Hocht, Sabine Hornig, Irène Hug, Bettina Khano, Julia Kissina, Nikolaus List, Ulrike Mohr, Virginie Mosse, Piotr Nathan, Katja Pudor, Philip Topolovac, Inken Reinert, Sophia Schama, Geerten Verheus, Sinta Werner, Barbara Wille, and others
-
Franziska Opel
Close and Cold32€ Add to cartWith sex toys, the potential for misinterpretation and ill-advised use is vast, as countless slapstick comedies illustrate. Steering clear of quick laughs, Franziska Opel deftly harnesses this anarchic power of misunderstanding to explode our perceptions and worldview. Her works are painstakingly planned experimental arrangements in which she modifies or deforms mundane objects as well as those sex toys in subtle ways or powers them up in series, making us see them with fresh eyes. They cast a spell over us with their sensual allure, while our associative circuits processing what we see spark a certain sense of irritation. Curiosity, attraction, bewilderment, shame—expertly staged in photographs for this catalogue, the works elicit a wide range of emotions. Their energizing contradictions are elaborated by contributions from gifted writers: standalone poetic-narrative writings that reflect on several key aspects of Opel’s art in offhanded yet challenging ways.
-
Maria Braune
Keep Away From Fire28€ Add to cartMaria Braune’s (b. Berlin, 1988; lives and works in Munich and Bamberg) work revolves around a material she developed; named Migma, it consists of eight different renewable natural resources. She heats it, then casts and molds it in a process that continues for weeks. The resulting sculptures and installations sprawl throughout the space like sensuous organisms. Associations of growth and symbiosis emerge, but discontinuities and disintegration come into view as well. Braune’s creative process is part of an ecosystem and thoroughly anchored in the now. Her material is a vitally alive substance to which she responds in an immediate engagement, connecting it to mythological and narrative significations and setting it in relation to her own world.
Maria Braune studied woodcarving at the Fachhochschule für Bildhauerei in Berchtesgaden, Germany, in 2009–2011, then fine arts with Hermann Pitz at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich, where she graduated in 2017.
-
Chiharu Shiota
The Unsettled Soul48€ Add to cartWidely acclaimed for her distinctive visual language, which combines drawing, performance, sculpture, and installation art, Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota (b. 1972 in Osaka, lives and works in Berlin) addresses fundamental human concerns. Creating large-scale thread installations that incorporate a variety of everyday objects and memorabilia, she forms powerful environments that evoke a sense of nostalgia, personal history, and collective memory. The catalog accompanies the exhibition The Unsettled Soul, the first presentation of the artist in the Czech Republic. In addition to extensive photographic documentation of the exhibition at Kunsthalle Praha, the publication features an essay by Jason Waite discussing Shiota’s early works as well as an interview with the artist conducted by the editor, Christelle Havranek, about her key themes and the creation of the Prague exhibition.
-
Secundino Hernández
Miettinen Collection36€ Add to cartSecundino Hernández’s (b. Madrid, 1975; lives and works in Madrid und Berlin) paintings and works on paper blend figuration and abstraction, the linearity of drawing and exuberant color, minimalism and gesture. Slowly and methodically moving across the canvas, Hernández sets down sinuous lines and marks, using a brush or applying the paint straight from the tube before rinsing and scratching off the surfaces. The resulting compositions feel organized yet charged with explosive energy and evince manifold references: a physicality reminiscent of Action Painting, cartoon-style terse figuration, and passages that bring to mind Old Masters and especially the Spaniards El Greco and Velázquez. As Hernández observes, his works “may look like Action Painting or Expressionism, but they represent a profound and painstaking scrutiny of these visual idioms, a way of articulating my own contemporary perspective on certain aesthetic movements.”
Secundino Hernández studied at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid from 1995 until 2000 and at the Royal Spanish Academy in Rome in 2005–2006.
-
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.
-
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.
- Out of stock
Luxus?!
34€ Read moreWhat is luxury today? How do designers perform the magic of transforming a utilitarian object into a must-have? Where does consumerism shade into obsession? When does more-is-more give way to less-is-more?
Luxury means breaking with convention, and this book showcases—and spawns—a cornucopia of ideas, products, and positions around luxury, featuring influential thinkers from the worlds of design, science, art, and society. The cultural theorists Wolfgang Ullrich and Lambert Wiesing exchange letters on the concept of luxury; Montblanc’s creative director Zaim Kamal lays out future strategies; the artist Jonathan Meese pens a gold manifesto; and Bazon Brock inquires into the asceticism of luxury. We live in a world full of things that resemble one another so closely that the only difference is how they are marketed. What might the precious objects of the future look like? The book presents examples from aspiring designers such as the fashion student Victoria Reize, whose collection counters luxury with arch defiance. Design, we learn, is not just about creating supreme values. Luxury is limitation and longevity, scarcity and refinement, yearning and sensuality.
With works by Assemble, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Daniel Chodowiecki, Kai Löffelbein, Jonathan Meese, Olaf Nicolai, Marcel Odenbach, Tobias Rehberger and Anna Skladmann.
-
Emil Nolde
A Critical Approach by Mischa Kuball40€ Add to cartWhat is Visible and What is Not
Mischa Kuball (b. 1959, Düsseldorf; lives and works in Düsseldorf) investigates public and institutional spaces and the social and political discourses that shape them. At the invitation of the Draiflessen Collection and with support from the Nolde Stiftung, the conceptual artist grappled with the life and oeuvre of the painter Emil Nolde (1867–1956) and created a body of work titled Nolde/critique/Kuball. In piece after piece, Kuball drains Nolde’s works of the colors that made the Expressionist famous, challenging the beholder’s preconceptions and examining perception and its constituent processes. Laid out in black and white, the book accordingly directs our attention not only to what a picture shows, but also to how structures and organizing principles emerge into view.
Mischa Kuball has been professor of public art at the Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln, and associate professor of media art at the Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung/ZKM Karlsruhe since 2007.
Note: This publication is released in German, English and Dutch. When ordering, please let us know which edition you would like to receive. Use the annotation box on the checkout page.
-
Karin Hochstatter
gegengerade20€ Add to cartA Provocation of Vision between Surface and Depth
In her sculptural works, Karin Hochstatter (b. 1960, Cologne; lives and works in Cologne) deals with forms and their dissolution, as well as the perceptual mechanisms that arise from this. Everyday materials from high-tech production processes, such as construction products and foils, become fragile and expansive structures that question both our way of seeing and our notion of sculpture. The book documents her more recent works since 2012, which always exist as singular events in space and never appear a second time in the same way.
Karin Hochstatter studied Visual Art at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and Philosophy at Heinrich-Heine- Universität Düsseldorf. Since 1998, she has been a visiting professor and lecturer at universities in Germany and the USA.
-
Thyra Schmidt
Über Diebe und die Liebe. On Thieves and Love.15€ Add to cartAn artist’s book, an artist’s text
On twenty-two large-format typographic sheets, Thyra Schmidt (b. 1974, Pinneberg; lives and works in Düsseldorf) develops a narrative featuring moments in an amorous relationship. Thoughts and encounters between “her” and “him” are captured in poetically constructed, fragmentary units of meaning. Imaginary images are conjured in the mind’s eye: Close-ups and intimate insights into a delicate web of interpersonal incidents. Personal observations and experiences form the starting point of this artistic exploration of love. Yet the focus of her work is not on autobiographical rendering, but rather on the tracking down of elementary structures, a general understanding of intimacy.
-
Francis Alÿs
The Nature of the Game32€ Add to cartThe Belgian artist Francis Alÿs (b. Antwerp, 1959) makes work that is as multifaceted as it is poetically subversive. Straddling the line between performative conceptual art and community intervention, his films and drawings chart the political and social realities of urban spaces. One of his most imposing long-term projects is Children’s Games, for which he documents children playing all over the world, from Paris and Mexico City to the Yezidi refugee camp Sharya in Iraq. The richly illustrated book contains ideas and sketches he compiled in preparation for this series. It lets us glimpse into the engine room of his artistic practice, revealing key elements of his filmic poetics. An essay by the ethnographer and filmmaker David MacDougall embeds Alÿs’s observations of children’s play in the contexts of childhood studies as well as the history of ethnographic documentary film.
Francis Alÿs (b. Antwerp, 1959) is widely regarded as one of the foremost artists working today. His oeuvre, which has garnered numerous prizes and been featured in solo exhibitions around the world, encompasses films, photographs, performances, drawings, and paintings, many of them explorations of the social and political realities of urban spaces. Since 1986, Alÿs, who trained as an architect, has lived in Mexico City, where he moved after the major earthquake of 1985 to help in the rebuilding effort.
Francis Alÿs – The Nature of the Game is the official publication of the Belgian pavilion at the 59th Biennale di Venezia, curated by Hilde Teerlinck.
-
Matthew Davis
Kustodiev28€ Add to cartAn Expressive Instant in Painting
The art of Matthew Davis (b. 1969, Colchester, UK; lives and works in Berlin) operates between the micro and macro dimensions, between control and chance. Working with extraordinary precision, the artist applies drops of synthetic resin varnishes and enamel paints to canvases laid flat. The artist’s book Kustodiev showcases a recent innovative turn in Davis’s output, whose latest works were inspired by the lusciously colorful pictures of the Russian painter Boris Kustodiev (1878–1927). Kustodiev was manufactured using offset presses and Office Offset, a largely forgotten reproduction process based on miniature offset printing machines. The publication is released in a limited edition of 250 copies.
Matthew Davis studied at the Camberwell College of Arts, London, and the Norwich School of Art and Design. His work has been shown at the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, Berlin; Künstlerhaus Wien, Vienna; Kunsthalle Wilhelmshaven; and other museums and galleries.
-
Jürgen Claus
To the Oceans with Imagination18€ Add to cartThe Sea as a Space of Artistic Experience
Jürgen Claus’s (b. 1935, Berlin; lives and works in Aachen and Baelen, Belgium) oeuvre encompasses paintings, films, light and solar installations, and underwater art. He is also a prolific writer on art, with theoretical works that have sold over 100,000 copies. “Jürgen Claus is the first one to see the ocean through an artist’s rather than a scientist’s lens,” Michel Ragon writes. In this book, Claus intertwines his experiences working on the fascinating underwater installations with a pressing contemporary concern: the global efforts to restore the seas to health. The publication combines visual art, architecture, poetry, and music for a multifaceted engagement with the world’s oceans.
Jürgen Claus majored in theater studies at the Universität München and was a research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and professor of media art at the Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln, Cologne.