Silke Eva Kästner
Panta Rhei
 | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | Dorothée Bauerle-Willert, Amrita Dhillon, Barry Schwabsky, Silke Kästner |
| Design | arc |
| Size | 20 x 28,5 cm |
| Cover | Otabind brochure |
| Pages | 144 |
| Illustrations | 90 |
| Language(s) | German, English |
| ISBN | 978-3-96912-099-6 |
Silke Eva Kästner (lives and works in Berlin and Uckermark) developed her creative approach while traveling in India, New York, and Japan. She creates temporary on-site paintings as well as conceptual pieces in which the viewer comes upon prepared materials and becomes part of—or even alters—the picture. Kästner documents these encounters in photographs or filmic traces out of which she compiles films in the editing suite. Probing the potentials of painting as communication, she foregrounds the active intervention and process. In the gallery no less than the urban scene, Kästner places painting in relation to architecture in order to frame it in varying perspectives.
The monograph offers insight into the foci of Kästner’s art; the works are grouped in chapters rather than arranged in chronological sequence. This structure makes the book a space of experience that gives the reader a vivid sense of her ephemeral creations.
After studying with Katharina Grosse at the Weißensee School of Art and Design Berlin, Silke Eva Kästner won the Mart Stam Prize; she honed her craft in India on a NaFöG fellowship and in New York on a yearlong DAAD fellowship. Funding support from the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (ifa) enabled her to initiate an ongoing exchange project between Kashmir and Berlin. Her work has been on view at numerous institutions including the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt; the Devi Art Foundation, Delhi; Berlinische Galerie, Berlin; the Queens Museum of Art, New York; Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin; and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin.
More books
-
Martin Noël
paintprintpaint35€ Add to cartA Comprehensive Overview on the tenth Anniversary of the Death of Martin Noël
Martin Noël (b. 1956, Berlin; d. 2010, Bonn) was a German painter, draftsman, and printmaker. He was one of the formative innovators of the long-neglected techniques of linocut and woodcut. With his large-format works on paper, he created a position for himself in contemporary art that is as much respected as it is independent. On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the artist’s death, this volume presents a comprehensive overview of his work from the mid-1980s to the last year of his life in 2010. Thirty-five exceptional works document Noël’s path from his early years as a painter, via the middle phase marked by printing blocks, linocuts and woodcuts, up to his late paintings.
Martin Noël studied Graphics and Painting at the Rheinische Fachhochschule Köln, Cologne. His works are included in, among others, the Federal Collection of Contemporary Art, the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz, and the collection of the Museum Pfalzgalerie Kaiserslautern.
- Release June 2025
The Psyche of the Portrait
Liliane Tomasko meets Bonnard, van Dongen, Paolozzi and Auerbach44€ Add to cartThe evolution of the portrait through the ages—that is the subject of The Psyche of the Portrait featuring selected works from the collections of the Sheffield Museums. Presenting the contemporary Swiss artist Liliane Tomasko (b. 1967) in dialogue with masterpieces by Pierre Bonnard, Kees van Dongen, Eduardo Paolozzi, Frank Auerbach, and others, the book frames a psychological perspective on art history in which the exploration of consciousness and perception is reflected in the art of portraiture. After the emphasis on the integral person and their gestalt, Sigmund Freud redirected depth psychology to discover the unconscious. Fifty years later, Jacques Lacan inspired the way of seeing in the portraits of Frank Auerbach, an exponent of the New Figuration. These diverse approaches now encounter Tomasko’s works with their gestural and performative mode of expression.
-
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.
-
Angelika J. Trojnarski
Noble Earth38€ Add to cartAngelika J. Trojnarski (born 1979 in Mrągowo/Polen; lives and works in Düsseldorf) examines facets of nature through an ecological, scientific, poetic study of their phenomena. Through a process centered on painting, her art articulates allegorical relationships between some of the most significant contentions of our time: humans and nature, strength and fragility, crisis and hope. She expresses a desire to understand nature by reproducing its workings, pointing to its incredible might while underscoring its increasing fragility. Trojnarski overlays raw canvases with paper fragments, employing brushwork and collage to apply materials like graphite or soot, generating a source of energy and suspense through color and contrast. The monograph offers an overview of the last decade of Trojnarski’s work.
Angelika J. Trojnarski 2006–2013 studies at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. 2006–2009 Painting with Jörg Immendorff, Markus Lüpertz and Herbert Brandl, from 2010 Free Art with Andreas Gursky.
-
Chunqing Huang
Painter’s Portrait II18€ Add to cartThe artist Chunqing Huang’s (b. Heze, China, 1974) Painters’ Portraits are anything but conventional likenesses. The portraits of artists including Louise Bourgeois, Anselm Kiefer, Martin Kippenberger and Imi Knoebel are acts of gestural-expressive abstraction and probing visual studies of the artist’s own recollections. Chunqing Huang paints meditations on art itself, systematically working through the vocabulary of abstract painting from Germany to the United States. The series Painter’s Portrait II features Chunqing Huang’s thirty most recent works from a series the artist has been transferring to canvases measuring 40 x 30 cm since 2016.
Painter’s Portrait II represents Chunqing Huang’s personal reflections on her influences, from Impressionism to expressive tendencies in abstract painting, which now make its début in book form. The catalogue showcases the portraits, each of which is distinguished by its own gestural quality and individual palette.
Chunqing Huang studied painting and interdisciplinary art at the Städelschule, Frankfurt am Main, where Wolfgang Tillmans and Peter Angermann were her teachers, and graduated from Hermann Nitsch’s master class. The German-Chinese artist’s work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions. A first selection from the Painter’s Portrait series was on view at Kunsthalle Wiesbaden and Museum Wiesbaden in the summer of 2021; the catalogue Painter’s Portrait II is released in conjunction with her exhibition of the same title at 68projects, Berlin.
-
6 U L
Lust and Desire in Art and Design28€ Add to cart“Whose Jizz is this?” Sechs-u-ell: to make sense of the publication title, trust your college German and your phonetic ear. “Sexual,” here, comprises the entire broad spectrum of what we associate with carnal pleasure. Lust, desire, ecstasy, repression, obsession—the world of art, fashion, and design abounds with specimens of eroticism and sexuality in their infinite variety, shopworn stereotypes be damned. Looking back on the thorough revision of society’s ideas about sexuality in the past three decades, the book inquires into how the works of visual artists, fashion creatives, and designers reflect today’s public debates over biological and social gender roles, power structures, and sexual violence or the fading of taboos over sexual practices. With works and designs by Walter Van Beirendonck, Monica Bonvicini, Tracey Emin, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Jürgen Klauke, Peaches, Cindy Sherman, Kara Walker, Vivienne Westwood, and many more. This book documents a grand exhibition scheduled for the past summer at the GRASSI Museum of Applied Arts, Leipzig, which had to be canceled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
-
Robbie Cornelissen
Terra Nova28€ Add to cartFuturistic / Fantastic
The Dutch artist Robbie Cornelissen’s (b. Utrecht, 1954; lives and works in Utrecht) oeuvre is endowed with unusual narrative power. His architectonic drawings in enormous formats, which often exude a futuristic aura, typically show deserted libraries, waiting halls, factory floors, or other oversized spaces. In alternation with his work on paper, the artist creates animated films out of thousands of drawings. This publication presents 250 drawings from Cornelissen’s new film Terra Nova, which explores an urgent contemporary concern: humanity’s responsibility for the earth and the open question of its long-term survival on the planet.
Robbie Cornelissen studied biology and ecology at Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht and at Vrije Akademie, Den Haag, and the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam. His work has been shown at Centraal Museum Utrecht, Hamburger Kunsthalle, the 11th Biennale de Lyon, and elsewhere.
- Out of stock
Hans Karl Zeisel
Hundred and more34,95€ Read morePossibilities of concrete art
What is possible without turning away from the cocrete? In the Bauhaus tradition, the typographer, graphic artist, designer and author Hans Karl Zeisel opens up countless design options with basic forms. His wooden cuboids demand a humorous approach to sculpture. They are creativity training, study tools and meditation game all in once. A playful experiment that reveals the diversity of concrete art.
- temporarily not available
David Hockney: Insights
Reflecting the Tate CollectionRead moreDavid Hockney (born 1937 in Bradford) is one of the most influential and technically versatile artists living today. This new publication gathers some of his most defining work from the 1960s to the present, including major works in the Tate collection. From early graphic cycles, double portraits and iconic pool paintings through to his photo collages, plein air landscapes, iPad drawings, and multimedia installations, the volume documents central themes and genres in Hockney’s oeuvre, as well as his constant experimentation.
Original essays by renowned critics and commentators illuminate the artist’s search for new forms of expression, the topographical and biographical reference points of his work, the technical innovation of his painting and printmaking, as well as his approach to new media.
-
Considering Finland
14€ Add to cartContemporary Art from Finland
With fourteen artistic positions from the fields of photography, video, and installation, Considering Finland offers fascinating insight into the Finnish art scene. The themes of the artists from one of the least populated and most densely forested countries in Europe is the relationship between humankind and nature, as well as the political, social, and economic implications of this. Their works point to cultural dispositions and standardizations of the individual within a society based on unattainable maxims, such as permanent success, lasting recognition, and limitless growth. Pictorial traditions, geographical structures, and socio-political and infrastructural factors are the bases of a mental construction that summarizes their artistic work under a national heading. With works by Kenneth Bamberg, Elina Brotherus, Ville Lenkkeri, Aurora Reinhard, Iiu Susiraja, Nestori Syrjälä, and Pilvi Takala.
-
Art in a Conflicted World
34€ Add to cartTrans-European Perspectives in the Age of Cultural Fragmentation
Since the turn of the millennium, much of the world has become an increasingly unstable and dissonant place. Sharp disruptions define many aspects of our social, cultural, and political relations. Art in a Conflicted World addresses this evolving reality, featuring critical positions articulated by visual artists and writers from Ukraine, Russia, and Great Britain—regions embroiled in extraordinary strife and upheaval. The publication takes a frank look at these multifaceted states of social dissonance and reflects them in diverse artistic and literary inquiries and responses. The contributions are the fruits of an interdisciplinary fellowship program at Kulturstiftung Schloss Wiepersdorf that offers the participants an opportunity to gain fresh creative and cultural insights, test ways of engaging with complexity, and develop models for the future that transcend national boundaries.
The publication presents works by Sarah Dobai, Nikita Kadan, Ali Eisa, and Sebastian Lloyd Rees (Lloyd Corporation) as well as writings by Alisa Ganieva and Tanya Zaharchenko.
The project was mentored by Wolfgang Tillmans, Tom McCarthy, Katharina Raabe, and Mark Gisbourne and received funding support from the German Federal Foreign Office.
- Release September 2025
Werner Hahn
Kailas. Berg und Gott55€ Add to cartKailas is far more than just a mountain—it is a symbol of spiritual quest, transcendence, and enlightenment. In this book, the painter and photographer Werner Hahn (b. Karlsbad, now Czech Republic, 1944) approaches the holiest peak in Asia from a unique perspective: as an artist, traveler, and profound connoisseur of its cultural history. This book interweaves art, mythology, and historical accounts from Buddhism and Hinduism. Hahn’s personal travel experiences, complemented by reflections on Western travel literature and spiritual sources, enter into a dialogue with ancient traditions, revealing Kailas as a place of both deep personal experience and artistic contemplation. A visual pilgrimage to one of the most significant mountains in the world.
-
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.
-
Liam Gillick
Filtered Time (ENGLISH)28€ Add to cartThe sculptor and object artist Liam Gillick (b. Aylesbury, UK, 1964; lives and works in New York) has created an intervention titled Filtered Time for the historic galleries of the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. Projections of light and color and acoustic effects condense six thousand years of cultural history into an immersive spatial experience. Gillick initiates a conversation between the iconic Processional Way and the Ishtar Gate from Babylon, the monumental sculptures of Tell Halaf, and other exhibits, engendering new layers of meaning across all historical periods. The first joint project of the Vorderasiatisches Museum and the Hamburger Bahnhof—Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart makes for a singular visual and sensory experience. Designed by the artist himself, the publication not only documents the richly colorful production, but also provides insight into the eventful history of the museum, which is approaching its centennial.
Liam Gillick studied at the Hertfordshire College of Art in 1983–1984 and at Goldsmiths, University of London from 1984 until 1987. Gillick is a prolific published writer as well, producing essays, reviews, fiction, and theatrical scenarios.
-
Feuer und Farbe
Gemälde und Grafiken von Walter Jacob35€ Add to cartWalter Jacob (1893-1964) was a painter whose oeuvre and life reflected the discontinuities of the twentieth century in condensed form. Contemplative natural scenes and the self-portraits were constants to which he hewed throughout his career; in stylistic terms, however, his oeuvre could hardly be more contradictory. Working first in the Impressionist, then in the Expressionist style, he eventually forged a form of expression tending toward abstraction, although he rejected modernist painting throughout his life. The Nazis considered his early work “degenerate,” which led him—a committed National Socialist and active member of the SA—to adapt not just his ideological convictions, but also his aesthetics to the new era: starting in the mid-1930s, he produced naturalistic depictions, sometimes suggestive of the New Objectivity, of “popular” motifs like landscapes, animals, soldiers, and more. Tellingly, though, the backs of some of his canvases are taken up by works that suggest the pleasure he took in experimenting with color and form. The same tension is palpable in the abstract landscapes of his late oeuvre. This catalog gathers works to retrace Jacob’s checkered career, complemented by (art) historical essays that embed his output in its context.
- Out of stock
Flatland
35€ Read moreBetween the Dimensions
The title of this book quotes a literary work by Edwin A. Abbott that was first published in 1884 and gradually gained considerable fame: an allegorical satire whose protagonists are geometric figures, narrated by a square that relates its discovery of a three-dimensional world. Flatland examines the ways in which artists have found inspiration in the formal vocabularies of abstraction since the 1960s. The lavishly designed book gathers works from the past six decades that challenge orthodox interpretations of abstraction.
Contributing artists: Laëtitia Badaut Haussmann, Francis Baudevin, Philippe Decrauzat, Marie-Michelle Deschamps, Angela Detanico / Rafael Lain, Hoël Duret, Sylvie Fanchon, Liam Gillick, Mark Hagen, Christian Hidaka, Sonia Kacem, Tarik Kiswanson, Vera Kox, Sarah Morris, Reinhard Mucha, Damián Navarro, Camila Oliveira Fairclough, Bruno Peinado, Julien Prévieux, Eva Taulois, John Tremblay, Pierre Vadi, Elsa Werth, Raphaël Zarka
- 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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
