Flash Art Books

Kaspar Müller — Frankfurt Freakout

17 December 2018 in Books Comment

Edition of 600
160 pages
Paperback 26×24 cm
ISBN 9788878161764

Released on the occasion of Müller’s solo exhibition at the Museum im Bellpark, in Kriens, this publication showcases a selection of photographs taken by the artist, over a year-long period, in secondhand shops, flea markets, antique stores and auction houses in Berlin. Art objects, bibelots and “discarded commodities” are framed as elusive, ghostly presences caught within fading backgrounds. They are vectors of the past, the scoria of history; fully extradited from the present, they convey shifting values concerning sentimentality, historicization and commodification. As reflected by the materiality of the publication itself — a lightweight, stapled paper booklet inserted into a transparent plastic sleeve — Müller’s images display objects whose very existence, meaning and usability in the world are interrogated.

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Zhao Zhao — Provocateur

15 December 2018 in Books Comment

Provocateur
Zhao Zhao

Edition of 1000
119 pages
Paperback 16,5×22 cm
ISBN 9788894154030

This new title examines Zhao Zhao’s working practice, emblematic for art’s ability to address conflict—social, political, and aesthetic—in a world undergoing unprecedented upheaval. The artist has consistently positioned his art as a counterweight to systems of control that affect and regulate the lives of individuals in China; while his work’s increasingly global reach testifies to its profound resonance beyond his country’s borders. His deft use of a wide range of materials, combined with a tonal elusiveness that veers between the faintly ludic, the sardonic, and the unambiguously confrontational, justify his position as a crucial agent in contemporary cultural discourse.

Flash Art Books

Sam Falls – The Four Seasons Forever

5 March 2017 in Books Comment

Sam Falls
The Four Seasons Forever

Edition of 800
96 pages
Paperback 28×21 cm
ISBN 978-88-7816-175-7

A new publication on the work of Sam Falls, The Four Seasons Forever, depicts 13 photogram works made by the artist, each pictured before and after its exposure to natural elements, such as sun, wind and rain. The first section of the book shows Falls’s collection of classical music on vinyl, photographed lying on shimmery, silk material. Each record, accompanied by its original cover, serves as “ elief” or “sun catalyst”, in order to create an impression of two geometric shapes (a circle and a square) on silk. Time, chance and accident combine in this series of works, which the artist created on the occasion of a year-long exhibition at Galleria Franco Noero, Turin. The publication includes an extended conversation between the artist and Nicolas Trembley.

Flash Art Books

Matteo Callegari

11 January 2017 in Books Comment

Matteo Callegari

Edition of 600
124 pages
Hardcover 26×24 cm
ISBN 9788894154009

This publication explores the painting practice of New York–based, Italian-born artist Matteo Callegari. Organized in sections according to the artist’s bodies of work, the volume digs into Callegari’s constellation of references — from ancient funerary sculpture to Renaissance painting — and rearticulates materials according to the artist’s strategies of image-making. Design studio Front Desk Apparatus imitates Callegari’s painting practices of distortion and delineation in order to freeze the moment in which the images’ semantic value deteriorates. Callegari’s paintings appear in these pages as corrupted data, information bugs; at the same time they fight for their own iconicity. Embodying the very process of the artworks’s making, this book can be read as the platform of Callegari’s “painting system.”

Flash Art Books

Wang Yuyang – Tonight I shall meditate upon that which I am

8 July 2016 in Books Comment

Wang Yuyang
Tonight I shall meditate upon that which I am

Tonight I Shall Meditate Upon That Which I Am is the first bilingual monograph on the work of Chinese artist Wang Yuyang. The book delves into Wang’s practice, focusing particularly on his eponymous solo show at the Long Museum in Shanghai in 2015. It features contributions by an international roster of writers, including Beijing-based artist and curator Bao Dong, Director of CAC Shanghai Zhang Ga, CUNY Distinguished Professor David Joselit, Flash Art co-publisher Helena Kontova, Stanford University Professor Pamela M. Lee, and writer and curator Robin Peckham.

The book’s title is taken from Wang’s eponymous work executed in 2008 — a colossal sculptural wreckage which, according the artist, was evidence of the Apollo 11 Lunar Module disintegrating upon landing or during the voyage home. This work alludes to a future that sees its twilight in the smoldering ruins, a future conceived in the overlapping of the “that” in “I” and the “I” in “that.” “That which I am” conjugates the subject and the object, conflating the inanimate and the soulful and suggesting an emerging relationship between things and humans. This foreshadows much of the artist’s recent work, providing a conceptual clue to understanding his magnificently uncanny creations.

Edition of 800
354 pages
Hard cover 28×21 cm
ISBN 9788894154016

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