Books

Sad People in Modernist Homes in Popular Films

20 May 2019 in Books Comment

Sad People in Modernist Homes in Popular Films
Vol. 2, 2019

The long-awaited follow-up to Benjamin Critton’s canonical broadside Evil People in Modernist Homes in Popular Films (2010), this second entry in the series explores Hollywood’s tendency towards housing unhappiness and melancholy inside some of its most beloved modernist abodes. Is modernism a prison for the depressed?

From Colin Firth’s existential crisis in John Lautner’s 1949 Schaffer Residence (in Tom Ford’s A Single Man), to investigations of a family in Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm slowly falling into chaos in New Canaan – home of the Harvard Five’s domestic modernist experiments – the perceived sterility of the modern movement has frequently been used by the movies as an aesthetic shorthand for tragic protagonists.

With essays by Erik Benjamins, Andrew Romano, Adam Štěch, and Mimi Zeiger
Edited and designed by Benjamin Critton
Published by Surplus Surplus Surplus
First edition, 2019
24 pages, full color, 11.5 × 15 in.

Draw Down

Helmut Lang 1986–2005

11 May 2019 in Books Comment

Helmut Lang 1986–2005

Two-set book published 2019 by printings.jp.

Features a total of 840 pages with pictures of archive pieces from the Helmut Lang collections between 1986 to 2005.

Trés Bien

Poster Town — Contemporary Poster Design from Lucerne

7 May 2019 in Books Comment

Poster Town
Contemporary Poster Design from Lucerne / Aktuelle Plakatgestaltung aus Luzern

Editors: Erich Brechbühl, Klaus Fromherz, Martin Geel, Michael Kryenbühl, Simon Rüegg, Raphael Schoen, Ivan Weiss, Megi Zumstein
Designer: Johnson / Kingston

Lucerne—Switzerland’s poster town—has a vibrant graphic design scene, which in recent years has become known for its sophisticated posters well beyond the country’s borders. Professional colleagues are in awe of how a relatively small city can produce so many well-designed posters. Lucerne posters can be found in many exhibitions. To give one example: in 2015 alone, twenty-six of the hundred best posters from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland came from Lucerne and the surrounding area—in other words, more than a quarter of all the awardwinning works. What’s behind this? Is it coincidence or a preponderance of designers of above-average talent in a comparatively small area? The book Poster Town tracks this phenomenon with a wealth of images and texts and creates a record of Lucerne’s poster designs for posterity. The content of the book is archived and showcased in an extended form on the website www.postertown.ch

Text: Bettina Richter, Pirmin Bossart, Martina Kammermann, Marc Schwegler

784 pp.
with 800 black-white and colour illustrations
thread-sewn softcover with plastic jacket
Leipzig September, 2017
ISBN: 9783959051781
Edition Number: 1
Width: 17 cm
Length: 22.5 cm
Language(s): German, English

Spector Books

Super Graphics: The Works of Yuki Kikutake

6 May 2019 in Books Comment

Super Graphics: The Works of Yuki Kikutake

How can a place or space be changed through its re-evaluation by graphic design?

According to Yuki Kikutake, “supergraphics” are a recent trend of site-specific design that connects people and places. They decorate everyday scenes, from construction sites and public spaces, to in and around buildings.

With an innovative but simultaneously subtle viewpoint fostered by her global experiences, Japanese graphic designer Kikutake focuses not only on attractive, comfortable spaces but also on places and objects that give a negative impression.

This book features around twenty of Kikutake’s works and cross-genre designs that can serve as a guideline for future projects, from landmarks and trains to product and book design.

Published by Seigensha, 2018
Bilingual, in Japanese and English

Hardcover with jacket, 192 pages, color and b&w images, 5.9 × 8.7 inches

ISBN: 978-4-86-152677-0

Draw Down Books

The Elusive Archive

5 May 2019 in Books Comment

The Elusive Archive

A reinterpretation of the printed 50-year archive of Biennale Interieur, Belgium’s major international design exhibition.

The archive, comprised of over three hundred magazines and newspapers, offered Specht Studio and collaborator Levi Lanser the opportunity to (re)shape, (re)interpret, and (re)invent the archive by selecting and publishing scans from the publications.

Rational content was approached in an intuitive way, with just a few parameters: 1) Intuitive action (picking the magazine); 2) Structured action (setting a timeframe); 3) Structured action (three scans); 4) Intuitive action (a personal scan).

Because the results were unknown, Specht and Lanser called the work an “elusive archive.” Elusive—meaning difficult to find, catch, or achieve.

The final publication features forty posters, as well as a transcription of an email conversation about the project between Specht and Lanser. A full list of magazines used in the project is recorded on the cover noting title, publishing date, and type of content used for the publication.

Published by Stockmans, in collaboration with Specht Studio and Levi Lanser

Conceived for The New Masters, a project by DIFT for Biennale Interieur 2018 in Kortrijk, Belgium.

Printed in a limited, individually numbered edition of 300 copies

80 pages, unbound broadsides, full color, 12 × 16.5 inches

ISBN: 978-9-07-720755-0

Draw Down Books

Marc Camille Chaimowicz — Andy’s in Town

2 May 2019 in Books Comment

Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Andy’s in Town (signed limited edition publication), 2019

Marc Camille Chaimowicz
Andy’s in Town, 2019
Signed and numbered publication
53 pp
Edition of 100 (10AP)
£150 (ICA Red Members £112.50)

Marc Camille Chaimowicz established himself in the 1970s London art scene as an artist who playfully merged performance and installation while maintaining deep criticality. Working across almost every conceivable form, his cross-disciplinary work challenges the categorical divisions between art and design.

Andy’s in Town is a limited-edition publication comprised of images taken by Chaimowicz in 1975 of Andy Warhol signing copies of his iconic text, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B & Back Again). The images are accompanied by original texts contributed by Lucy Kumara Moore and Charles Asprey, alongside excerpts from A to B & Back Again. Andy’s in Town captures an iconic moment in the cultural history of London, offering a poetic meditation on the nature of fandom, consumption, voyeurism and connection.

Andy’s in Town is accompanied by a photographic edition of the same name that the artist produced for the ICA in 2018, available to purchase here. The images presented in the volume will also be used in a future exhibition to be produced by Chaimowicz in 2020.

Andy’s in Town was produced in partnership with Hurtwood Press.

Marc Camille Chaimowicz’s works are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Tate Modern and Victoria and Albert Museum. Selected solo exhibitions include The Jewish Museum, New York (2018); Serpentine Galleries, London (2016); Flat Time House, London (2016); Indipendenza, Rome (2016); and Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York (2014).

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