Norwegian "black metal" music was born in the late 1980s as a reaction against the fact that heavy metal music had become mainstream. In Black Low , the organized chaos of Bjarne Melgaard's "trash art" or "slacker art" mines the themes and visual culture of this music to focus on ideas of suicide as a philosophical question.
This first monograph on Korean-born, New York-based Sung Hwan Kim offers a multifaceted encounter with the artist's lyrical, perfomative work via the artist's own writing, a conversation with Joan Jonas, an account of his Prix de Rome performance by Ann Demeester and an essay by Harvard's Luis E. Cárcamo-Huechante. With an introduction by Eva Huttenlauch.
The book provides an insightful perspective from the Museum's Director, highlighting the synergy between the Frans Hals Museum's collection of Haarlem Old Masters and De Hallen Haarlem's modern art. It explores how both collections showcase the evolution of artistic expression from the Golden Age to contemporary times. As these two institutions merge in 2018, the book celebrates their unified vision, featuring a selection of works that resonate with the Director, illustrating the dynamic interplay between traditional and contemporary art.
An Exhibition--Another Exhibition is the first monograph of the work of Belgian artist Valérie Mannaerts. The book catalogues two solo exhibitions that took place in 2010--"Blood Flow" at Extra City Kunsthal Antwerpen, and "Diamond Dancer" at de Appel arts centre. Dynamically collaging across mediums--from paint to bronze, papier-mâché to concrete--Mannaerts playfully arranges sculptural elements to create spatial installations, scenographies without stages. As scales oscillate and materials remain staunchly mercurial, the works exist in a space of deliberate ambiguity, sitting on the threshold between object and image. For the two exhibitions, Mannaerts manipulated the gallery spaces through the idiosyncratic positioning of diverse spatial objects, creating fields of tension and obscurity, surreal situations that asked viewers to decode the objects staring back at them. The monograph includes an essay by Anselm Franke, a conversation between the artist and Ann Demeester, and images and illustrations of the two exhibitions. Co-published with de Appel arts centre and Extra City Kunsthal Antwerpen Contributors Ann Demeester, Anselm Franke, and Valérie Mannaerts
Mit Strip the Auctioneer ist Christian Jankowski der totale Coup gelungen, – sicherlich nicht zufällig zu der Zeit, nachdem erstmalig ein Künstler seine Werke selbstständig, also unter Umgehung des Zwischenmarktes einer Galerie, in eine Auktion gegeben hat. Ging es hier tatsächlich um die elitären Verteilungsstrategien des Marktes, oder vielmehr um einen vom Künstler und Auktionshaus veranstalteten Schlussverkauf zu Höchstpreisen? Christian Jankowski erklärt dieses Spektakel mit all seinen Komponenten zum Kunstwerk selbst. Das Buch dokumentiert, in der Darstellung an einen gewöhnlichen Auktionskatalog angelehnt, diese einzigartige Performance. With Strip the Auctioneer Christian Jankowski landed a real coup, and surely not coincidentally at a time when another artist, in an unprecedented move, avoided the intermediary gallery trade and auctioned off his annual production directly. Is it really all about the elitist distribution strategies of the market, or rather about an organized sale by an artist and auctioneer at top prices? Christian Jankowski declares this spectacle and all its components to be a work of art.
In a world of globalization, increasingly diverse forms of tourism and consumption this group show catalogue brings together a collection of critical texts and works by artists that question these processes.