Michael Bertram
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|---|---|
| Design | DCV |
| Cover | Hardcover |
| Size | 29 x 24 cm |
| Pages | 176 |
| Illustrations | 86 |
| Language(s) | German |
| ISBN | 978-3-96912-047-7 |
The Mülheim-Kärlich Nuclear Power Station, 1975–2019
In 1975, construction began in Mülheim-Kärlich on what was to be the only nuclear power plant in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate. After numerous court battles and only two years of trial and regular operation, the plant was decommissioned in 1988 and dismantled starting in 2001. The 530-foot cooling tower, taller than Cologne Cathedral, was the point of reference, landmark, and eyesore of an entire region; its time-consuming demolition became a symbol of the perennial political polarization over the decision to phase out nuclear power.
Michael Bertram (b. Mendig, 1968; lives and works in Mayen) took photographs of the reactor looming between homes and factories in order to record the future past in pictures. The plant cost seven billion deutschmarks to build and one billion euros to take back down: vast resources expended on a temporary installation that lasted forty years and left a lasting mark on the landscape, the surrounding communities, and the people who lived in its shadow. Starting with the demolition, the book presents an inverted timeline in eighty-one black-and-white photographs. The object seems to rise before our eyes until, at the end of the series, five color photographs conjure up a past that was very much present only a moment ago—a singular document of Germany’s industrial heritage.
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FINALE
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Alexandra Tretter
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Her kaleidoscopic figurations unfold from a center at rest in itself and multiply in symmetry and asymmetry towards all sides. She contrasts the circular form, the unchanging basic element of her compositions, with the oval, which constantly strives beyond itself, transforming itself in ever-new permutations from one figure into the next, into eyes, mouths, breasts, petals or vulvas.
Her images strive for composure, unfold and blossom, only to let go of all gestalt-like form. Once gained stability is instantly pushed into turmoil. Colors flare up violently or flow delicately about, lighten or shade each other, carry or throw each other off course. Tretter equally realizes materialization and dissolution as basic principles of her painting.
Whereby all, what her images absorb, preserve and release, is experience, growth and slow maturing. Her paintings are “figurations of affection”, in which each individual turns towards something else, doubts or grows, at times turns away or surrenders all the more consciously. They question everything, start anew and yet find their way back to themselves, into their very own.
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Hans Hofmann
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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.
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Logan T. Sibrel
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This book is the artist’s first comprehensive publication with works from the last twenty months. While the first part presents the artist’s paintings, the second part presents his drawings with the edges of the backing paper digitally removed so that it looks as if the images were drawn directly into the book.
Logan T. Sibrel completed his bachelor’s degree at Indiana University in Bloomington in 2009 and his master’s degree at Parsons New School of Design in New York in 2011. His most recent solo exhibitions include In Another Life and Galerie Thomas Fuchs (Stuttgart, DE) and Brake For Your Sweetheart at Auxier Kline (New York, NY).
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What is Vienna Actionism?
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Matilde Damele
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Photography of Presence
24€ Add to cartThe Importance of the Moment in Artistic Photography
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With works by Viktoria Binschtok, Julian Faulhaber, Mareike Foecking, Stephanie Kiwitt, Nikolaus Koliusis, Barbara Probst, and Wolfgang Zurborn as well as texts by Holger Kube Ventura.
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Sibylle Springer
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Die Malerei von Sibylle Springer (geb. 1975, lebt in Bremen) widmet sich der Rolle von Frauen in der Kunstwelt des digitalen Zeitalters. Für ihre Portraitserie Feed malte sie bisher 40 Künstlerinnen, basierend auf fotografischen Selbstinszenierungen aus deren Instagram-Feeds. “Sind Soziale Medien Instrumente der Emanzipation oder führen sie gar zu neuen Formen der Objektifizierung?” (Kohout) Für Wait for It kopierte Springer Popstars aus dem Netz, aber benutzte ein die Leinwände oxidierendes Silber, das die ewig-jungen Ikonen vor unseren Augen altern lässt, gerade das, was digitale Imagekontrolle zu verhindern sucht. In neueren, textilen Objekten verknüpft Springer Künstlerinnen der Vergangenheit und Gegenwart. Dieses informative Buch begleitet ihre Ausstellung im Kunstverein Bremen.
FERNE SPIEGEL / DISTANT MIRRORS
KUNSTHALLE BREMEN
UNTIL JANUARY 11, 2026 -
Candida Höfer
Kunsthistorisches Institut Bonn35€ Add to cartThe Kunsthistorisches Institut Bonn, Yesterday and Today
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Candida Höfer was a member of Bernd Becher’s inaugural photography class at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Her works were shown at documenta 11 in 2002, and in 2003, she and Martin Kippenberger represented Germany at the 50th Biennale di Venezia.
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Eva Jospin
Wald(t)räume22€ Read moreThe Forest as a Place of Longing: Eva Jospin’s Magical Corrugated Cardboard Sculptures
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Pensive Images
16 Artists in Dialogue with W. G. Sebald35€ Add to cartOn Memories and Temporalities
Pensive Images examines the complex and invariably singular relationships through which images and memories are inextricably linked. The book relates to the work of the German writer W. G. Sebald (b. 1944, Wertach; d. 2011, Norfolk), especially to four fictional stories he published between 1990 and 2001, in which he inserted non-captioned blackand- white photographs of uncertain provenance and nature into the text like memories punctuating ways reminiscent of his writing. It brings together 16 artists who, in ways reminiscent of Sebald’s approach, explored the realms of memory and past from the perspective of experience and intertwining temporalities.
With works by Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc, Dove Allouche, Lonnie van Brummelen / Siebren de Haan, Moyra Davey, Tacita Dean, Jason Dodge, Félix González-Torres, Ian Kiaer, Jochen Lempert, Zoe Leonard, Helen Mirra, Dominique Petitgand, John Stezaker, Danh Vo and Tris Vonna-Michell.
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Johannes Schütz
Die Unterbrechung / The Interruption48€ Add to cartJohannes Schütz (b. Frankfurt am Main, 1950; lives in Berlin) is one of the best-known stage designers and directors working today. His style may be characterized as “simple, clean, and radical.” All major theatres and opera houses in the German-speaking countries and beyond have showcased Schütz’s work. He trained with Wilfried Minks and created his first stage setting for Luc Bondy in 1971. His career then took him to Berlin’s Schillertheater and the Kammerspiele in Munich, later he became head of stage design at the Bremer Theater and the Schauspielhaus Bochum. Schütz taught scenography at the ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe from 1992 until 1998 and has been professor of stage design at the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Arts since 2010.
In his book Die Unterbrechung, he meets Annette Storr to discuss his new work for the stage, which is documented by maquettes and photographs and, most often, by stills from the performances. The productions represented include Penthesilea by Heinrich von Kleist, Landestheater Salzburg, 2018; Hamlet by William Shakespeare, Schauspielhaus Bochum, 2019; Reich des Todes by Rainald Goetz, Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg, 2020; Richard II by William Shakespeare, Burgtheater, Vienna, 2021; and Der Idiot by Dostoevsky, Thalia Theater, Hamburg, 2021.
- 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.
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Thomas Lehnerer
Grott18€ Add to cartA Facsimile by the Theologian and Artist
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Wege in die Abstraktion
Marta Hoepffner und Willi Baumeister24,90€ Add to cartUnknown Influences of Modern Painting and Photography
Marta Hoepffner (b. 1912, Pirmasens; d. 2000, Lindenberg) is considered a pioneer of experimental photography. For the first time, this book compares the artist’s early photographic experiments, portraits, and color photographic studies with the paintings of Willi Baumeister (b. 1889, Stuttgart, d. 1955 Stuttgart). As professor at the Frankfurter Kunstschule – today’s Städelschule – Baumeister had a decisive influence on the development of his student Hoepffner. An extraordinary book that presents more than fifty works from the 1910s to the 1970s.
Marta Hoepffner’s works have been exhibited at, among others, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the National Portrait Gallery in London. Willi Baumeister studied at the Kunstakademie in Stuttgart and was a member of the influential November Group. He was defamed as “degenerate” during the Nazi regime and is now considered one of the outstanding artists of modernism.
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Ingo Mittelstaedt
Courtesy15€ Add to cartPerception and Comprehension in Photography
Ingo Mittelstaedt (b. 1978, Berlin; lives and works in Berlin and Hamburg) creates staged photographs, combining and contrasting them with diverse objects in expansive installations. His pictorial arrangements probe a variety of concerns and imageries that he sources from museum settings or the modes of representation in ordinary advertising brochures. Gestures of showing, pointing, bringing out, and uncovering are leitmotifs in Mittelstaedt’s canny and subtly humorous exploration of the potentials and limitations of the photographic medium.
Ingo Mittelstaedt studied fine arts at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig and received numerous emerging-artist awards, including the New York fellowship of the Niedersächsische Sparkassenstiftung. His work has been shown at Kunstverein Hannover, the Wilhelm-Hack-Museum, Ludwigshafen, Marta Herford, and elsewhere.
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René Holm
Let me be your everlasting light25€ Add to cartLight is the theme of the new paintings by René Holm (b. Esbjerg, 1967). Faceless protagonists traversing symbolic forests with leafless trees occurred already in previous works, stripping them of individual or local signifiers and moving them into a spiritual and universal realm. Skulls with burning candles in Still lifes symbolize the fragility of life and unavoidability of death. Holm goes a step further and makes his figures carry the symbols in their hands or even has them become themselves live “still lifes” with burning candles on their backs. The presence of death is not a picture to behold from afar but a truth to be aware of and carry with us every day. The burning candles also mean that we’re here with our sorrow as well as our light. We must burn to shine. This book accompanies the artist’s gallery exhibition Let me be your everlasting light in Horsens, Denmark.
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G. I. Widmann
Retrospektive24€ Add to cartA Tribute to the 100th Birthday. One of the Important Figurative Positions of the Young Federal Republic of Germany
She was an unusual painter who sought to hide her gender behind a pseudonym, while at the same time addressing her own circumstances as an independent artist and single mother in her large-format canvases. Gudrun Irene Widmann (b. 1919, Reutlingen; d. 2011, Reutlingen) created an oeuvre that lays claim to being one of the most important figurative positions of the 1950s and ’60s. This retrospective volume pays testimony to a strong personality and sheds light not only on her self-image as an artist but also on the influences of society and personal contexts — representative of the situation of female artists in general.
Gudrun Irene Widmann studied at the academies in Düsseldorf, Stuttgart, and Vienna during the Second World War. She worked in her own studio in her hometown of Reutlingen until her death.
