





Ossian Fraser
DISSOLVING ACTS
![]() | |
---|---|
Editor(s) | Christian Ganzenberg, Lydia Korndörfer |
Author(s) | Andreas Merkl, Ilze and Heinrich Wolff, Jean Troillet, Laura Helena Wurth |
Design | Parat, Munich |
Size | 22 x 30,5 cm |
Cover | Softcover |
Pages | 152 |
Illustrations | 58 |
Language(s) | English |
ISBN | 978-3-96912-148-1 |
Ossian 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.
More books
-
Was ist Wiener Aktionismus?
50€ Add to cartBlows were dealt. An artist exposed and cut himself, others urinated in glasses, daubed themselves with dirt, and masturbated over the Austrian flag. Meanwhile, music was playing, including the national anthem; someone read pornographic writings. Vienna in the late 1960s: what had started in the artists’ homes and studios was now brough out on the grand stage, and taboos were broken in full view of the public.
The Vienna Actionism Museum’s first publication is dedicated to the idea of Vienna Actionism in the dynamic context of abstract realism, Fluxus, and the international Happening scene. The book relates the story of one of art history’s most influential art movements, spearheaded by the Actionists Günter Brus and Otto Muehl, Hermann Nitsch and Rudolf Schwarzkogler.
-
Barthélémy Toguo
10€ Add to cartBarthélémy Toguo’s art is a call for community and love, but there is nothing naïve about it. His paintings, graphic art, sculptures, performances, and installations explicitly grapple with colonialism, migration, and inequality; he directs our attention to the devastations wrought by humans, to the slow deaths of nature and cultures. But he does not dwell in this abyss. He aspires to something greater: to create work that establishes non-hierarchical connections; to build, as he puts it, a “world of solidarity and generosity” that knows neither ego nor identity, a community of all forms of life that flourish and pass away so that new living beings can sprout from their remains—Endless Blossoms. His choice of words and the aesthetic of the works gathered in this catalogue suggest that he is not alone in this undertaking. He stands with Ellen Gallagher, Wangechi Mutu, Louise Bourgeois, Marlene Dumas, and Kiki Smith. With them and with all of us, Toguo envisions a colorful future, a universe of exuberant energy and joie de vivre.
-
DAWN OF HUMANITY – ART IN PERIODS OF UPHEAVAL
37€ Add to cartThe book and exhibition present works from the first two decades of the twentieth century from the Kunstmuseum Bonn’s collection in dialogue with contemporary creative positions. What the works have in common across the distance of a century is their genesis in, and reflection on, a time of major social and political crisis. Back then, life had been profoundly changed by the industrial revolution; nowadays, climate change, wars, and the rising political power of right-wing ideologies are transforming the life of our communities. The presentation conceives art as a tool that lets us interrogate the world and imparts fresh intellectual impulses, and so also plays an active part in our societies. The title Menschheitsdämmerung – Dawn of Humanity – is borrowed from the poetry anthology of the same title released by Kurt Pinthus in 1919, which samples the Expressionist lyric poetry of the young century in four chapters: “Downfall and Outcry”; “Love Human Beings”; “Awakening of the Heart”; “Entreaty and Indignation.” Florian Illies, who already wrote an afterword for the 2019 centenary edition of Menschheitsdämmerung – the bestselling poetry anthology in the history of German literature – contributed the keynote essay in the book.
Artists: Nevin Aladağ, Francis Alÿs, Kader Attia, Yael Bartana, Rebekka Benzenberg, Monica Bonvicini, Andrea Bowers, Heinrich Campendonk, Louisa Clement, Max Ernst, Georg Herold, Franz M. Jansen, Alexej von Jawlensky, Käthe Kollwitz, Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Max Liebermann, August Macke, Helmuth Macke, Goshka Macuga, Marie von Malachowski-Nauen, Carlo Mense, Zanele Muholi, Heinrich Nauen, Grace Ndiritu, Anys Reimann, Deborah Roberts, Daniel Scislowski, Paul Adolf Seehaus, Tschabalala Self, Monika Sosnowska, William Straube, Emma Talbot, Hans Thuar, Lawrence Weiner
-
GABRIELE BASCH, GESA LANGE
UND_NEWS_FROM_NOW_HERE18€ Add to cartBeyond Painting
Gabriele Basch’s (b. 1964, Bad Homburg; lives and works in Berlin) cut-outs and Gesa Lange’s (b. 1972, Tongeren, Belgium; lives and works in Hamburg) drawings are meditations on construction and deconstruction as well as doubts and how to overcome them. Both artists expand the range of painting: Basch, with incisions into the medium and a creative handling of the tinged shadows that transform the painted panel into a wall-mounted object; Lange, by embroidering her canvases with colorful threads that open up the pictorial space on all sides. The book presents works by both artists, initiating an animated and dynamic dialogue between their nonrepresentational visual idioms. Gabriele Basch is professor of painting at the Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften Hamburg. Gesa Lange is professor of graphic art at the Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften Hamburg. She has received the Kunsthalle Rostock Prize and other awards.
-
Adrian Schiess
The Song Element68€ Add to cartThe Renowned Swiss Artist and His Work in Its Architectural Setting
Smoothly painted panels laid out on the floor have earned Adrian Schiess (b. 1959, Zurich; lives and works in Mouans-Sartoux, France) international renown. His objects, which may be placed in a room as desired, are conceived as platforms of creative engagement with the appearance and disappearance of painting. They have become integral components of buildings by world-famous architects including Norman Foster and Herzog & de Meuron. For this book, Schiess has compiled spectacular series of photographs and extensive conversations that probe the peculiar quality of his work: hybrid and fluctuating and yet always utterly distinctive. It is the first publication to put the focus on this essential aspect of his output, documenting works created between 1993 and 2018.
Adrian Schiess studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule Zürich and trained as a graphic designer. His works were on display at the 44th Biennale di Venezia and at documenta IX.
-
WORLD FRAMED
Zeitgenössische Zeichenkunst der Sammlung Schering Stiftung im Kupferstichkabinett38€ Add to cartIn 2008, the Schering Stiftung began acquiring outstanding contemporary works on paper for the Kupferstichkabinett (Museum of Prints and Drawings) in Berlin. The collection, which has since grown to 130 nonfigurative drawings and a small number of prints, emphasizes the close conjunction of art and science. The holdings also reflect central tendencies in the art of drawing: in addition to exploring the line and its multifaceted formulation, artists shed light on the bounds of their medium and its expansions and undertake forays into inter-media art within drawing. The lavishly designed publication WORLD FRAME—the title is borrowed from a work by the artist Matt Mullican—presents the works acquired thanks to this partnership. It inquires into how artists translate their perceptions of their world into pictures and which contexts and discourses inform those pictures. Which perspectives, which ideas frame the segment of reality an artist observes?
“World Framed,” exhibition, Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, July 7–October 8, 2023
-
Austin Eddy
Selected poems40€ Add to cartSince 2018, the American painter and sculptor Austin Eddy (b. Boston, 1986; lives and works in Brooklyn) has probed the manifestations of modern painting in a world between abstraction and figuration. As a child and teenager, Eddy immersed himself in the imageries of comics, cartoons, and record covers. In the early 2010s, he studied in Chicago with Barbara Rossi, who had been one of the Chicago Imagists in the 1960s. The deconstruction of everyday objects into innumerable forms and hues became his central theme. Eddy’s works play with luminous colors, overlaid textures, animated bird motifs, and abstract planes of light while grappling with a human existence defined by loss and the passage of time. Situated on the margins of reality, his paintings and sculptures are like visual poems, celebrating the evanescent instant that exists only for a second before fading into the past.
Austin Eddy completed a BFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2010.
-
Larissa Kikol
SIGNED. Unterwegs mit der 1UP-Crew und Moses & Taps18€ Add to cartWho owns the city? It is a question to which graffiti artists and politicians have very different answers. 1UP and Moses & Taps are international stars of the scene, realizing radical creative concepts in spectacular actions. The art critic Larissa Kikol shadowed them on their nocturnal forays for three years and gathered her experiences in a book that has become a singular tribute to the graffiti scene. It lets us witness the genesis of the artists’ works on the knife’s edge between civil disobedience, criminal liability, and an irrepressible freedom. Traveling throughout Germany, Kikol records absorbing dialogues that reflect the contrast between different worlds: the legal and the illegal art worlds, painting and protest. Always on the hop and in danger of being discovered and arrested, she ventures beyond the bounds of permissible art, into subway tunnels, up on roofs, across switchyards. A portrait emerges of Germany and Berlin and the power relations that shape our society.
Larissa Kikol (b. 1986) works as a freelance art critic, art scholar, and writer. She writes for Die Zeit, Spiegel Online, Art, Kunstzeitung, Mare, Monopol Online, and Kunstforum International. In 2016, she won C/O Berlin’s international Talents award in the art criticism category. She teaches and lectures at art schools and universities in Germany and France.
Kikol studied stage design and dramaturgy in Berlin-Weißensee and obtained a Ph.D. in art studies from the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design. She lives and works in Marseille and Cologne.
-
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.
-
Jan Muche
Agora42€ Add to cartTracing the Wear of the Life of Labor
The visual art of Jan Muche (b. 1975, Herford; lives and works in Berlin) revolves around forms that bring to mind structural steelwork, giant industrial installation components, or scaffolding. His constructivist-abstract paintings and sculptures look back on steel as a symbol of industrialization and the working class, which featured in unflappably cheerful and adulatory depictions that were characteristic of the twentieth century’s ideologies – Communism, Stalinism, National Socialism, actually existing Socialism. Muche’s roughhewn aesthetic combines proletarian charm with the spirit of onward and upward, taking the beholder to regions not untinged by dissonance. This book, supported by the Leinemann-Stiftung für Bildung und Kunst, brings his reflections on the significance of work and the impact of digital technology on physical toil as well as his engagement with yesteryear’s “heroes of labor” into focus.
Jan Muche trained as lithographer and studied with Karl Horst Hödicke at the Hochschule der Künste Berlin.
-
Lovis Corinth
Maestro del colore – Maestro della grafica35€ Add to cartLovis Corinth (b. Tapiau, East Prussia, 1858; d. Zandvoort, Netherlands, 1925) ranks among the leading German Impressionists. But he has also been described as a precursor of Expressionism for his impulsive and passionate style in painting and graphic art as well his liberal handling of form, which vividly conveys agitated states of mind and powerful emotions. In addition to an eminent body of paintings and numerous drawings and watercolors, he left a graphic oeuvre encompassing over a thousand prints. In his paintings as in his etchings and lithographs, Corinth dedicates himself to a set of recurring themes: mythological and religious motifs, nudes, still lifes, landscapes, and portraits of his family and close friends. His graphic work also shows him engaging with the challenges of self-portraiture.
-
Jenny Brosinski
Things I’ve Never Said58€ Add to cartJenny Brosinski’s (b. Celle, 1984; lives and works in Berlin) paintings in large formats look like uncoordinated abstract compositions with traces of wear deliberately left in place. This brings their materiality to the fore and reveals the creative process. Expressive oil paint on unprimed canvas, spray-painted lines, typographic elements, shoeprints, or pieces of masking tape on the canvas: on the one hand, these are experiments and statements; on the other hand, they are engagements with painting as such. The artist added sculpture to her repertoire in 2019, making figurative and sometimes colorfully painted imaginary beasts in bronze or stone—more evidence of her subtle sense of humor, which also manifests itself in her pictures and especially in their titles. The extensive monograph offers profound and comprehensive insight into Brosinski’s oeuvre.
Jenny Brosinski studied illustration and animation at the Weißensee Kunsthochschule, Berlin, the École supérieure des arts décoratifs, Strasbourg, and the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences. She completed her education with a master class in Berlin in 2010.
-
Me, Family
Portrait of a Young Planet40€ Add to cartA Journey Through Many Worlds
In these times of great uncertainty, the themes that surface in the works of the thirty-six international artists gathered in Me, Family are more relevant than ever. Compiled by Francesco Bonami with a nod to Edward Steichen’s historic exhibition The Family of Man, the volume paints a multifaceted portrait of humanity in the early decades of the twenty-first century. The original installation of photographs and excerpts from writers opened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1955 and then went on a seven-year tour of one hundred and fifty museums all over the world. Matching the radicalism of Steichen’s conception, Me, Family presents works by contemporary artists who harness a wide range of media and genres to explore the ways in which humans today engage with their manifold coexistent histories and the diverse challenges they confront. Including reproductions of contemporary art as well as representations of social networks, fashions, information technologies, advertising, sound, music, and performances, the book captures a reality that is beautiful, dramatic, and intoxicating by turns. With writings by Roland Barthes, Francesco Bonami, Edward Steichen, and others.
With works by Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Doug Aitken, Sophia Al Maria, Yuri Ancarani, Darren Bader, Lara Baladi, Cao Fei, Cheng Ran, Clément Cogitore, István Csákány, Christian Falsnaes, Harun Farocki, Simon Fujiwara, Rainer Ganahl, Theaster Gates, Jack Goldstein, Andreas Gursky, Thomas Hirschhorn, Hassan Khan, Ga Ram Kim, Olia Lialina, Li Ming, Cristina Lucas, Karolina Markiewicz & Pascal Piron, Eva & Franco Mattes, Shirin Neshat, Philippe Parreno, Mario Pfeifer, Jon Rafman, Cindy Sherman, Marianna Simnett, Rudolf Stingel, Thomas Struth, Wolfgang Tillmans, Jordan Wolfson, Wong Ping, and Akram Zaatari.
-
Fiona Rae
Row Paintings24€ Add to cartElements of Energy and Complexity
Fiona Rae’s (b. Hong Kong, 1963; lives and works in London) abstract paintings attracted the attention of broad audiences when she participated in the legendary exhibition Freeze at London’s Docklands in 1988. It put her on the map as an early member of the group known as Young British Artists, who would revolutionize not only the English art world. To this day, Rae’s distinctive creations, which are rooted in a conceptual engagement with the problems and potentials of abstract painting, have remained prominent and seminal contributions to the field. In 2011, she was appointed professor of painting at the Royal Academy, one of the first women to hold this position. The catalogue is the first to feature the most important pictures from this period: the Row Paintings. They mark the inception of the artist’s internationally acclaimed oeuvre. An essay by Terry R. Myers offers an appraisal of the Row Paintings’ significance in their historic context as well as the contemporary discourse of painting.
- Out of stock
Jeff Wall
AppearanceRead moreA New Perspective on the Work of the Photo Artist
The trademark of Jeff Wall (b. 1946, Vancouver; lives and works in Vancouver) are large-scale backlit light boxes, which appear like carefully composed film stills. The art historian ties his works in manifold ways to art history and, due to his elaborate arrangements, is often compared to modern masters. Many pictures by Jeff Wall are inspired by novels or stories and condense into intentional stagings of the everyday. With a special focus on constellations which present the medium photography like a search for traces, the book allows a new perspective on the artist’s works which have up until now rarely been shown in exhibitions.
Jeff Wall studied art history at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, and at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. His works are exhibited internationally, for example at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Tate Modern, London, and the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2008 he received the Audain-Award for his life work.
-
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.
-
Shara Hughes
Time Lapsed35€ Add to cartShara Hughes (b. Atlanta, 1981; lives and works in New York) describes her pictures and drawings as psychological or invented landscapes. Her cliff coasts, river valleys, sunsets, and lush gardens, often framed by abstract patterns, might be the settings of fairy tales or scenes from paradise. As the New Yorker put it, the paintings “use every trick in the book to seduce, but still manage to come off as guileless visions of not-so-far-away worlds.” Wielding oil paint, brushes, spatulas, and spray cans, the artist celebrates painting itself, not infrequently quoting the masters of past eras.
Shara Hughes studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and later attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Her most recent solo exhibitions are currently on view at the FLAG Art Foundation, New York, and the Kunstmuseum Luzern, Switzerland. In 2021, she had shows at the Yuz Museum, Shanghai; the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis; the Garden Museum, London; the Aspen Museum of Art, Colorado; and at Le Consortium, Dijon.
-
João Onofre
Untitled (in awe of)25€ Add to cartJoão Onofre’s works are tributes to art history and pop. He gleans what is in danger of being lost right now, realigns it, and translates it into something sublime. His art encourages the beholders to reconsider a past that has faded in collective memory with a critical eye and make peace with it. His creative process is guided by the material and a clearly defined concept that nonetheless does not restrict a work’s finding its own way. That is why he does not commit to a particular medium, making videos, performances, installations, and much more. What all his works have in common is that they probe the limitations of their medium and our perceptive capacities in novel ways. This catalogue presents three recent works in which the essence of Onofre’s art becomes manifest: he molds myths and symbols into awe-inspiring images, sounds, and forms—not for nothing have critics labeled him an alchemist. In the catalogue, his tangible compressions of cultural history are rendered in imposing pictures and flanked by an ambitious essay that places them in their context.
- Shortlist German Photo Book Award 2019/2020
Arina Dähnick
The MIES Project45€ Add to cartIn the Footsteps of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
In her photographic works, Arina Dähnick (b. 1965, Krefeld; lives and works in Berlin) deals with urbanity, spatial reality and visual perception. She discovered the architecture of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in 2012, when, after a thunderstorm, she perceived the Neue Nationalgalerie in a both fascinating and paradoxical spatial experience of boundless vastness – and a simultaneous feeling of being held. From then on she photographed the building under various conditions until its closure in 2015, afterwards following in Mies van der Rohe’s footsteps from Berlin to Brno, from Chicago to New York. Dähnick captured his most famous buildings – including the Villa Tugendhat, the Seagram Building, and the Lake Shore Drive Apartments – in impressive photo series, which have been exhibited during the Chicago Architecture Biennial amongst others. The book was awarded the silver medal of the Deutscher Fotobuchpreis.
-
What is Vienna Actionism?
50€ Add to cartBlows were dealt. An artist exposed and cut himself, others urinated in glasses, daubed themselves with dirt, and masturbated over the Austrian flag. Meanwhile, music was playing, including the national anthem; someone read pornographic writings. Vienna in the late 1960s: what had started in the artists’ homes and studios was now brough out on the grand stage, and taboos were broken in full view of the public.
The Vienna Actionism Museum’s first publication is dedicated to the idea of Vienna Actionism in the dynamic context of abstract realism, Fluxus, and the international Happening scene. The book relates the story of one of art history’s most influential art movements, spearheaded by the Actionists Günter Brus and Otto Muehl, Hermann Nitsch and Rudolf Schwarzkogler.