This super book published by KALEIDOSCOPE accompanies a two-artist exhibition co-curated by Alessio Ascari and Shinji Nanzuka, bringing together for the very first time the work of Japanese artist Hajime Sorayama and Swiss artist HR Giger. Touring from PARCO Museum in Tokyo to PARCO Event Hall in Osaka between December 2020 and February 2021, the exhibition coincides with the 80th anniversary of Giger’s birth and features over 50 works ranging from the late 1960s to the present day.

The catalogue, designed by Swiss-based art direction firm Kasper-Florio with Samuel Bänziger, features a foreword by co-curator Alessio Ascari, a critical essay by Venus Lau, an interview with the late HR Giger by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Patrick Frey, and a recent interview with Sorayama by Ascari. It comes with a 50x70cm two-sided poster, and two 20cm die-cut stickers.

Born and trained at opposite ends of the world, Sorayama and Giger are apparently at odds—one’s bright colors are swallowed by the other’s dark chiaroscuro; one’s enthusiastic outlook on technology borders with the other’s nightmarish dystopia; one’s “super-realism” challenges the other’s surrealism—yet they share more than meets the eye. Both emerged in the 1970s and 1980s, becoming acknowledged masters of airbrush painting and influential creators beyond the boundaries of the traditional art world, blurring the relationship between commercial and personal work. But more importantly, at the very core of their practice lies a similar concern: an obsessive investigation of AI, eternal life, and the fusion of organic and apparatus. Gynoids (female androids) are predominant subjects, conjuring the post-human and the apotheosis of the woman to reveal an underlying tension between life, death, power and desire. 

Hajime Sorayama (b. 1947 in Imabari, Ehime prefecture) has established his position as a legendary artist, both within Japan and internationally, for his extensive oeuvre that centers upon an ongoing pursuit for beauty in the human body and the machine. Best known for his precisely detailed, hand-painted portrayals of voluptuous women, obtained through an astoundingly artful use of a wide array of realistic expressional techniques, most prominently airbrush painting, the artist’s international recognition is inextricably tied to his signature series titled “Sexy Robot” (1978-) featuring erotic android figures clad in shiny chrome metal, and to AIBO, the award-winning robotic pet he designed for SONY in 1999. 

Hans Ruedi Giger (1940–2014) was a Swiss surrealist painter, sculptor, and set designer known for his biomechanical creatures, extraterrestrial landscapes, and disturbing sexual machines. In a career that spanned more than five decades, he employed a staggering variety of media, including furniture, movie props, prints, paintings and sculptures, often creating exhibition displays and total environments with the immersive quality of a wunderkammer—including, most notably, the HR Giger Museum in Gruyères. In 1979, his concept design for Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) won an Academy Award for Best Achievement in Visual Effects and catapulted to fame his daunting vision of death and futurism.

Details

Most of us live our lives in our clothes without realizing their power. But in the hands of artists, garments reveal themselves. They are pure tools of expression, storytelling, resistance and creativity: canvases on which to show who we really are.

In What Artists Wear, style luminary Charlie Porter takes us on an invigorating, eye-opening journey through the iconic outfits worn by artists, in the studio, on stage, at work, at home and at play. From Yves Klein's spotless tailoring to the kaleidoscopic costumes of Yayoi Kusama and Cindy Sherman; from Andy Warhol's signature denim to Charlotte Prodger's casualwear, Porter's roving eye picks out the magical, revealing details in the clothes he encounters, weaving together a new way of understanding artists, and of dressing ourselves.

Part love letter, part guide to chic, and featuring generous photographic spreads, What Artists Wear is both a manual and a manifesto, a radical, gleeful, inspiration to see the world anew-and find greater pleasure and possibility in the clothes we all wear.

Details

Home Works – A Cooking Book: Recipes for Organising with Art and Domestic Work, expands on cooking with art and food as a process for coming together and building collectivity. The book highlights the art and politics of eating together through a number of artistic, curatorial and tasty dinner recipes. Recipes that nourish and nurture conversations around domestic labour, collaborative practices and feminist politics, expanded upon through a series of essays and interviews.

Onomatopee
January 2021
1st edition
280 pages
Softcover
18.50 × 23.00 cm
ISBN 978-94-93148-37-6
English

Questions of what is real and what is a replica, what is explicit and what remains concealed, which Peter Fischli dissects in various media: sculpture, video, photography, and installation probe the essence of the authentic and counterfeit image, laconically appropriating the familiar and alienating it. The exhibition catalogue assembles essays by various authors addressing all the series of works, Thomas D. Trummer expounds on Fischli's invariably humorous way of working, focusing in particular on his concept for the exhibition at Kunsthaus Bregenz. The publication is designed as an artist's book by Peter Fischli himself.
Text: Peter Fischli, Rosa Aiello, Daniel Baumann, Bice Curiger, Eva Fabbris, Arthur Fink, Cara Manes, Mark Godfrey, Valentin Groebner, John Kelsey, Charlotte Matter, Kaspar Müller, Andreas Selg, Thomas D. Trummer Stanislaus von Moos, Katrin Wiethege, Stefan Zweifel

Still Life | When we stayed home – works in isolation

Hole & Corner

The truth is, I’ve been travelling all year. Around my home.

To my kettle at least seven times a day. Around my sofa picking up children’s bricks and doll-sized tableware. Watching moonrise out of the bathroom window.’
 
Jessica Brinton’s introduction to the Hole & Corner book, Still Life – When we stayed home, which documents the lives of 54 of our contributors during the three months of lockdown in spring 2020, highlights the ordinary moments of an extraordinary year. The spring lockdown was particularly felt by the crafters, makers, photographers and writers, whose usual creative lives were put on hold, their work confined to their homes and their hour-long daily walks. For many, it was a moment to pause and reflect, to focus on a personal project, learn something new, or to reimagine old ideas. Our senses seemed heightened by the impact of the pandemic, the relentlessness of the daily numbers of hospitalisations and death tolls, the anxiety we felt for our families and friends around the world.
 When Hole & Corner founder and creative director Sam Walton put out the call to the magazine’s creatives to submit work, there were no rules or restrictions, just a desire to collect work that represented their everyday lives in this unique moment in time. 
 While some of our contributors had the privilege to make constructive use of their time, we are acutely mindful of the negative impact that lockdown had on the lives of so many, which is why we are donating 100% of the profits from this book to Refuge.

Bauhaus Imaginista

A School in the World

Marion von Osten, Grant Watson

From its inception in 1919, the Bauhaus was a truly international institution. Students and teachers travelled from Croatia, Hungary, Japan, Palestine, Russia, Switzerland and the United States to Weimar and later Dessau and Berlin to become part of the school, drawn to the Bauhaus because of its cosmopolitan, avant-garde perspective and hands-on curriculum. This outlook was reflected in the way the school received and interpreted diverse influences, ranging from Arts and Crafts to reform pedagogy, from Eastern spirituality to constructivism, machine production and the Neues Bauen (New Building) movement. Art and design at the Bauhaus also contained a transcultural element, gleaned through exposure to non-western cultures, books and museum collections and interaction with foreign students and visiting lecturers.

The land of Shit and Sugar

Bored of the visual waste landscape of minimalistic products? The book «In the land of Shit and Sugar» whisks you into a parallel universe filled with absurd goods, far away from all moral expectations and usual design conventions. Anachronistic, loud, flashy and carefree. A place where anything can be found, even that which has been banned by the style police. The stories of 100 chosen products have been analyzed, deconstructed and celebrated: without any taboos or the slightest claim on good taste. Welcome to the Land of Shit and Sugar!

Pages: 300
Printed in: Switzerland

Onomatopee #151

The Trouble with Value

Art and Its Modes of Valuation

This book discusses the symbolic and economic value that a work of art holds, being a product of its maker’s labour.

This dynamic compilation of theoretical texts, essays and artistic contributions provides insight into current notions of value and value systems, and considers everything from the role of language to the circulation of art, and how it’s aided by the infrastructure of institutions.

Along the way, The Trouble with Value tackles the historical legacies of devaluation in art, the value of artistic labour, and art’s capacity to tell stories beyond mainstream channels of dissemination.

Featuring contributions by Anca Benera and Arnold Estefan, Rachel Carey, Kris Dittel, Fokus Grupa, Fokus Grupa, Karolina Grzywnowicz, Arnoud Holleman and Gert Jan Kocken, Anthony Iles & Marina Vischmidt, gerlach en koop, Monique Hendriksen, Femke Herregraven, Kornel Janczy, Sława Harasymowicz, Sarah van Lamsweerde, Ewa Partum, Mladen Stilinović, Maciej Toporowicz, Kra Kra Intelligence Cooperative and more.

Details

Type: softcover including poster (370 x 275 mm)
Dimensions: 190x285 mm / 7,48x11,22 inch
Pages: 224
Editor: Kris Dittel
Author: Anthony Iles and Marina Vishmidt, Krzystof Siatka
Graphic: Agata Biskup

Do Not Feed Alligators

David Shama

David Shama captures his subjects in moments of repose, set against the grit and grain of the sun-drenched South. Shama documents a road trip across an often-overlooked America of swamps, reptiles, scrapyards and cheap motels. 

Specifitcations

136 Pages
8" x 11.5
Published by Damiani in 2018
Printed in Italy

Sick Photography

Representations Of Sickness In Art Photograhy

248 p, ills colour & bw, 18 x 24 cm, hb, English

Maija Tammi
Publisher Aalto University

Video/Art: The First Fifty Years

 The curator who founded MoMA's video program recounts the artists and events that defined the medium's first 50 years

Since the introduction of portable consumer electronics nearly a half century ago, artists throughout the world have adapted their latest technologies to art-making. In this book, curator Barbara London traces the history of video art as it transformed into the broader field of media art - from analog to digital, small TV monitors to wall-scale projections, and clunky hardware to user-friendly software. In doing so, she reveals how video evolved from fringe status to be seen as one of the foremost art forms of today.

SPECIFICATIONS:

Format: Hardback
Size: 203 x 137 mm (8 x 5 3/8 in)
Pages: 280 pp
Illustrations: 75 illustrations

Postcards

Borders are a means of separation. They separate two sides, defining a here and a there. But they also delineate what lies within the boundaries, instilling a sense of safety and security. Although they implicitly stake a claim to permanence, nothing is as changeable as boundary lines. So it is ironic that people and entire nations should develop so much pride and protectionism on the basis of existing borders, while knowing full well that these are artificial constructs that are constantly changing and sometimes disappearing altogether.
– Roger Eberhard

Human Territoriality is a selection of Roger Eberhard’s photographs of former border regions around the globe and down through the course of human history. Some of these borders have shifted over time, by only a few hundred meters or much more, due to climate change or manmade changes in the landscape, others have vanished with the fall of mighty empires on either side. Eberhard’s photographs, supplemented by in-depth captions, help us to grasp the protean puzzle of the world’s cartography. In a time of mass migration, border walls and spreading nationalism, they reveal the inherent instability of these man-made demarcations.

Hardcover, 116 Seiten, 51 Farbabbildungen

120 p, ills colour, 21 x 27 cm, pb, Danish/English

'ToiletMartin PaperParr' is a high-impact visual volume revealing the most iconic images from the prolific archives of internationally celebrated artist Martin Parr and the duo who created 'Toiletpaper', Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari.

Martin Parr’s ironic, full colour images combine perfectly with the irreverent and poignant wit created by Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari. The 120 vibrant back-to-back images included in this compelling volume are sensually and visually appealing, as well as being reflective of reality. This book of the books shakes up the mind and leads the eye in every direction.

language: english
pages: 192
illustrations: 120
binding: hardbound
release: March 2020