Benjamin H. D. Buchloh

Manfred Hermes

Texts by Benjamin H.D. Buchloh and Manfred Hermes

For more than thirty years, Isa Genzken has been developing a versatile oeuvre, continually extending it by adding new aspects. Her settings, her unusual combinations of materials, and the fragile but monumental character of her constructions reflect the surrounding world and the fragility of human existence. Her work—which includes sculptures and installations as well as photography, collage, and film—explores the space between public claims and private artistic autonomy, thus defining an interface where the personal and the universal meet. The formal and conceptual rigor at the root of Isa Genzken’s approach is tempered by unrestricted freedom, producing works that can be interpreted and experienced on very different levels. A central role is played by the choice and combination of materials with different connotations which the artist finds at home depots, builders’ suppliers, and department stores: whereas in the past Genzken used wood, plaster, epoxy resins, and above all concrete, the material of Modernism, her main materials today are plastic, synthetics, and a wide range of mirrors, as well as everyday items and consumer goods such as chairs—design classics alongside cheap camping chairs—garments, and plastic dolls and animals.

For her exhibition in the Hauptraum at the Secession, Isa Genzken has devised an installation with new sculptures and pieces on the wall: wheelchairs and seats draped in various textiles, ribbons, and sheets, walking frames, anthropomorphic figures, and wall-filling collages made from mirrors, photos, and adhesive tape create a carefully arranged image. Warholesque baby dolls with their outsize glasses look like prematurely aged children or, conversely, like infantilized adults, waiting under tattered parasols on a Hollywood set for shooting to recommence. But less than this bizarre scene, what is disconcerting here is the cool precision with which, for all the piece’s figurativeness, no story is told. Dolls and animals form heterogeneous abstract surfaces, but they are not deployed to narrative ends, and neither are other materials such as the mirrors, plastic sheeting, or the paint dripped or sprayed over many of the sculptures.

The new works relate to Genzken’s recent 

 series. But while these works were presented on plinths at eye level, at the Secession, the entire space turns into a kind of plinth and the visitors become part of this scenario that is both beguilingly beautiful and disturbing at the same time. The works turn an imaginary inner space outwards, but rather than being something merely invented, the space always refers to the real—a comparative moment against which all the pieces can be measured. In an interview with Wolfgang Tillmans, Isa Genzken describes the way she thinks a sculpture should look: “It must have a certain relation to reality. I mean, not airy-fairy, let alone fabricated, so aloof and polite. [...] Rather, a sculpture is really a photo – although it can be shifted, it must still always have an aspect that reality has too.”

Isa Genzken

A detail of an artwork by Michaël Borremans titled The Commuter II dated 2022

Portrait of Michaël Borremans. Photo by Pascal Gamarte

Hans van Heirseele

 was published on the occasion of the artist’s second solo 

 at David Zwirner in 2006. Amongst the fourteen new paintings on view was the eponymous work 

 (2005), which portrays a young man, fashionably attired, holding two twigs from each of his nostrils. Available in hardcover, this catalogue includes a text by Belgian artist and curator Hans van Heirseele.

Michaël Borremans: Horse Hunting

Portrait of Neo Rauch, 2023. Photo by Uwe Walter.

 was published on the occasion of the artist’s third solo exhibition at David Zwirner in 2005. The exhibition presented ten large-scale canvases with an odd assortment of workers, students, military men, and other characters, against backdrops of mundane architecture, industrial settings, or bizarre and often barren landscapes. Also included is a text by Christine Mehring, writer and Professor of Art History at the University of Chicago.

Neo Rauch: Renegaten

Luc Tuymans in his studio, 2022. Photo by Otman Q

Gerrit Vermeiren

 at David Zwirner in New York, this catalogue was designed by the artist. Featured are ten paintings, many now considered iconic works and in the collections of major museums, which offer a critique of America by laying claim to real events, suppressed memories, and political issues. For Tuymans, each painting presents a fragmented glimpse of a disjointed whole; his aim is to make the audience consider each image, the opposite of each image, and the uncertainty that follows. The exhibition’s title, 

, is in itself an aberration. While it refers to a seemingly requisite order determined by society at large, it simultaneously suggests the opposite – 

– and therefore subverts the notion of correctness as it relates to social and societal expectations.

In a key painting, we are confronted by the cropped, larger-than-life-sized face of Condoleeza Rice. Prompted by a remark made by a Belgian official, in which Rice was described as “strong; not unpretty,” Tuymans’s portrait of the former United States Secretary of State forces us to reevaluate a known public figure within the parameters of the still image. In 

a perfectly-arranged dinner table evokes early Americana. In 

, the image of an empty dance hall underscores a lack of festivity – mediocrity tempered by the absence of dancing – and in 

a single couple sways over the state seal of Texas at the Governor’s Ball. In other paintings, it is the sense that something has just happened, or is about to, that suggests a fragile or ephemeral state – the eerie face of a Medieval statue; the dust cloud following the demolition of a building, with a New York City street lamp barely visible; an oval mirror reflecting a solitary lamp; the top of a canopy bed in which the cropped composition is eerily reminiscent of the water line from a flood. In the painting entitled 

, we are reminded by a tiny red light that, at any moment, things can go terribly wrong – or, at the very least, that change is inevitable.

Luc Tuymans: Proper

Jason Rosenfeld

Jason Tougaw

Texts by Jason Rosenfeld and Jason Tougaw

Published on the occasion of his fourth solo exhibition at David Zwirner in 2005, this beautifully designed and produced catalogue—with essays by curator and art historian Jason Rosenfeld and writer Jason Tougaw—features Marcel Dzama’s most recent drawings, costumes, sculptures, and notebook pages. The title, 

, is borrowed from the poet Dante and recalls both grandiose artistic and literary cycles from the nineteenth century such as the New York Hudson River School artist Thomas Cole’s five-painting 

, where nature plays as large a role as humans. In Dzama’s art, personification has always been the main leitmotif—imagined characters and trees and beasts assume base human characteristics. The catalogue also includes a unique fold out designed by the artist.

Marcel Dzama: The Course of Human History Personified 

Chris Burden

Chris Burden: Early Work

A painting by On Kawara, titled MAY 11, 1967, dated 1967.

On Kawara, One Million Years (Past), 1970-1971, Page 2001

Shiuji Inomata

Jean-Luc Nancy

Osho

Texts by Shiuji Inomata, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Osho

 was published on the occasion of the artist’s third solo exhibition at David Zwirner in 2004, which presented a selection of date paintings, one from each of the past forty years. Also known as the 

 series, the artist began making his now signature date paintings in New York City on January 4, 1966. Available in hardcover, this catalogue includes texts by Japanese scientist Shiuji Inomata; French philosopher Jean Luc-Nancy; and Indian spiritual leader Osho.

On Kawara: Paintings of 40 Years

A portrait of Gerhard Richter by Werner Bartsch.

Jean-Philippe Antoine

This catalogue accompanies the exhibition at Zwirner & Wirth:


Gerhard Richter: Landscapes

An installation view of Juan Muñoz's work, Conversation Piece, Dublin, in 1994.

Louise Neri

Juan Muñoz: Selected Works

A still from a film by Francis Alys, titled Children’s Game #26: Kisolo, Tabacongo, DR Congo, dated 2021.

Texts by Francis Alÿs, Lynne Cooke, Alejandro Diaz, Tom Eccles, Dario Gamboni, RoseLee Goldberg, Laurence Kardish, Harper Montgomery, and Francesco Pellizzi

, marked the temporary move of The Museum of Modern Art from Manhattan to Queens in 2002. Presented by the Public Art Fund in collaboration with the museum, it was a public parade involving over 100 participants who carried reproductions of some of the museum’s masterpieces and a living representative of contemporary art, Kiki Smith. This hardcover catalogue features extensive photographic documentation of the event as well as contributions and essays by the artist; the then Public Art Fund director Tom Eccles; curator Lynne Cook, among others.

Out of stock

Francis Alÿs: The Modern Procession

“The disparate photographs assembled here were made over the course of twenty years. None of them were originally intended to be used in this book. By ordering and shaping them I tried to investigate the possibilities of narrative both within a single image and especially in relation to the other photographs. 

 is an attempt to discover the possibilities of meaning in the interaction of seemingly unrelated images in the hope that content can constantly mutate according to both the external and internal condition of the viewer, but remain meaningful because of it’s inherent, but latent content. The conscious and subconscious decisions made in editing the photographs is the real work of 

Philip-Lorca diCorcia: A Storybook Life

Juan Vicente Aliaga

Ulrich Loock

Andrei Platonov

Hans Rudolf Reust

Nancy Spector

Luc Tuymans

Texts by Juan Vicente Aliaga, Ulrich Loock, Andrei Platonov, Hans Rudolf Reust, Nancy Spector, and Luc Tuymans

In 1996, Phaidon released one of the important early publications on Luc Tuymans in its critically acclaimed ‘Contemporary Artist Series,’ which has now become a collector’s item. Re-published in 2003 and still kept in print, the revised and expanded edition added over 100 pages and included new artist’s writings and an expansive illustrated chronology. Available in paperback, this edition has over 260 pages and approximately 300 illustrations (250 in color).

, “Amongst other recently published monographs, the revised and enlarged edition of Phaidon’s 

…is opportune as it is just in time for his major show at Tate Modern in the Summer of 2004. Indeed Tate will find it difficult to match the breadth and scale of this book in any exhibition catalogue it may choose to produce. Tuymans is rapidly gaining groung as the successor to Gerhard Richter as the History Painter of the late 20th Century, and this book, which amounts to a catalogue raisonné as nearly every one of his paintings is reproduced, goes some way towards confirming his reputation.”

Frank Moore

In 1977 Frank Moore took a freighter from Montreal to Santander, Spain. He traveled through Spain, France, and Morocco, finally settling in Paris, where he obtained a residency in the Cité des Arts. Upon his return to New York, Moore began a decade-long involvement with modern dance, theater, film, and video that paralleled his development as a painter. The increasing devastation of the AIDS crisis through the eighties profoundly and irrevocably transformed his life and work. His work was included in the 1995 Whitney Biennial and is included in the collections of the Whitney Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Albright Knox Art Gallery.

Frank Moore: Between Life and Death

John Szarkowski

 was the first one-man show of color photographs ever presented at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Museum's first publication of color photography. The reception was divided and passionate. The book and show unabashedly forced the art world to deal with color photography, a medium scarcely taken seriously at the time, and with the vernacular content of a body of photographs that could have been but definitely weren't some average American's Instamatic pictures from the family album. These photographs heralded a new mastery of the use of color as an integral element of photographic composition. Bound in a textured cover inset with a photograph of a tricycle and stamped with yearbook-style gold lettering, the 

 contained 48 images edited down from 375 shot between 1969 and 1971 and displayed a deceptively casual, actually super-refined look at the surrounding world. Here are people, landscapes, and odd little moments in and around Eggleston's hometown of Memphis—an anonymous woman in a loudly patterned dress and cat's eye glasses sitting, left leg slightly raised, on an equally loud outdoor sofa; a coal-fired barbecue shooting up flames, framed by a shiny silver tricycle, the curves of a gleaming black car fender, and someone's torso; a tiny, gray-haired lady in a faded, flowered housecoat, standing expectant, and dwarfed in the huge dark doorway of a mint-green room whose only visible furniture is a shaded lamp on an end table. For this edition of 

, The Museum of Modern Art has made new color separations from the original 35 mm slides, producing a facsimile edition in which the color will be freshly responsive to the photographer's intentions.

William Eggleston's Guide

Denise Blake Oleksijczuk

Nick Blomley

Jeff Derksen

Reid Shier

Neil Smith

Jeff Sommers

Edited by Reid Shier. Texts by Denise Blake Oleksijczuk, Nick Blomley, Jeff Derksen, Neil Smith, and Jeff Sommers

This beautifully designed catalogue provides an in-depth look at Stan Douglas’s monumental photograph 

, which depicts Vancouver’s contested south side of 100 West Hastings. Published to accompany the artist’s 2002 solo show at the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, the exhibition presented his film installation, 

, alongside a suite of related photographs including 

. Co-winner of the City of Vancouver Book Prize in 2003, this publication also includes a removable color poster of the work.

Stan Douglas: Every Building on 100 West Hastings

Philip-Lorca diCorcia: Heads

Philippe Pirotte

 at David Zwirner in New York, this catalogue documents Luc Tuymans’s fourth solo show at the gallery. After its showing in New York, the artist expanded this body of work to exhibit at the Belgium Pavilion of the 2001 Venice Biennale, where he was chosen to represent his country.

 examines the colonial history of Belgium, by focusing on the colonization of Zaire, previously known as the Belgian Congo. In his 1999 book entitled 

De moord op Lumumba (The death of Lumumba),

 Ludo de Witte makes the allegation that various institutions, including the Belgian government, were responsible for the 1961 murder of the Congo’s first legally elected Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, shortly after gaining independence. As a result of this publication, the “Lumumba Commission” was set up to investigate the matter further.

The exhibition’s title refers to the derogatory nickname 

, i.e. beautiful boy, which was given to Belgian’s young King Baudoin by the Congolese, and which was promptly changed by the Congolese authorities to the more respectful and authoritative 

, i.e. beautiful, noble man. The painting entitled 

 is a life-size portrait of the 24-year old Baudouin in a crisp white suit, arriving for the first time in the Congo for a four-week triumphant procession in 1955. The authority suggested by Baudoin’s uniform and his medals is contradicted by the featureless youthful face of the king, and his awkward and uncomfortable pose.

Here Tuymans explores a politically charged subject matter by employing a subtle and remote realization of specific events and people. Although the subject matter in this work refers specifically to regional history, the artist’s choice of paintings for this group of work invites parallels to recent American history. The racial divide apparent in the United States, reverberates throughout this body of work.

Beautiful White Man

Luc Tuymans: Mwana Kitoko

Bruce Wagner

Born and raised in Mississippi and Tennessee, William Eggleston began taking pictures during the 1960s after seeing Henri Cartier-Bresson’s 

. In 1966 he changed from black-and-white to color film, perhaps to make the medium more his own and less that of his esteemed predecessor. John Sarkowski, when he was curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art, called Eggleston the ‘first color photographer,’ and the world in which we consider a color photograph as art has changed because of him.

William Eggleston: 2¼

A painting by Lisa Yuskavage titled Night Classes at the Department of Painting Drawing and Sculpture, dated 2018-2020

Lisa Yuskavage, 2020. Photo by Jason Schmidt

Claudia Gould

Marcia B. Hall

Texts by Marcia B. Hall and Katy Siegel. Interview with the artist by Claudia Gould

Published on the occasion of the artist’s first solo museum survey at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, in 2000-2001, the exhibition showcased over fifty-five works, including a number of large-scale paintings, a series of hydrocal-cast figurines, and a selection of supporting small paintings, monotypes, and works on paper. This fully illustrated catalogue features texts by professor Marcia B. Hall and art critic Katy Siegel as well as an interview with the artist by the exhibition’s curator and ICA director Claudia Gould. This catalogue is out-of-print, making it a must-have for any collector.

Lisa Yuskavage (ICA)

Peter Poplaski

 is a concise and beautifully designed overview of Crumb’s remarkable career, presented in chronological order. The 250-page volume compiles material from five decades of work and features hundreds of drawings, illustrations, paintings, and covers as well as rare photographs of the artist and never-seen-before sketchbook work. Each of the 15 chapters is introduced by Crumb who contributes handwritten autobiographical anecdotes. It is a must-have for any Crumb collector.

The R. Crumb Coffee Table Art Book

Richard Serra

One of the most important sculptors of this century, Richard Serra has been a spokesman on the nature and status of art in our day. Best known for site-specific works in steel, Serra has much to say about the relation of sculpture to place, whether urban, natural, or architectural, and about the nature of art itself, whether political, decorative, or personal. In interviews with writers including Douglas and Davis Sylvester, he discusses specific installations and offers insights into his approach to the problem each presents. Interviews by Peter Eisenman and Alan Colquhoun elicit Serra’s thoughts on the relation of architecture to contemporary sculpture, a primary component in his own work. From essays like “Extended Notes from Sight Point Road” to Serra’s extended commentary on the 

 fiasco, the pieces in this volume comprise a document of one artist’s engagement with the practical, philosophical, and political problems of art.

Richard Serra: Writings/Interviews

Texts by On Kawara, Makoto Oda, and Tadashi Yokoyama

A scarce catalogue on Kawara's previously unstudied five-year stay in Tokyo, where he was part of influential avant-garde art student associations and wrote many pieces of art criticism. His violent and grotesque imagery from this period is in stark contrast to his streamlined conceptual 

series (1953-54; Tokyo National Museum of Modern Art), Events in a Warehouse and a number of figurative paintings and drawings executed in Japan.There are two essays, in both Japanese and English, "The History of an Odd Generation" by Makoto Oda, and "At the Junction of Time and Space: On Kawara in the 1950s" by Tadashi Yokoyama. The latter half of this book, alluding to his 

 series, is a collection of newspaper headlines from 1952 to 1956 in both languages, printed on newsprint.

On Kawara 1952-1956, Tokyo

Preface by Nicholas Fox Weber. Text by Kelly Feeney

This catalogue for a traveling exhibition considers the working drawings and spontaneous studies of Josef Albers, beginning with the landscapes and figure studies he created before enrolling at the Bauhaus, to abstractions inspired by archeological sites in Mexico, to color studies for his famous 

 paintings. An essay by the curator Kelly Feeney notes important influences and explores the development of Albers’s “seeing.”

Out of print

Josef Albers: Works on Paper

This collection invites readers into the irreverent, boundary-pushing world of R. Crumb, one of the most influential cartoonists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Bringing together iconic characters, subversive narratives, and his unmistakably intricate linework, these books trace how Crumb revolutionized underground comics, energized graphic arts, and challenged conventions around politics and popular culture. Taken together, they offer a vivid, uncompromising portrait of an artist whose work continues to disrupt, provoke, and inspire.

brings together twenty-five of R. Crumb’s most ambitious, acclaimed, and profound comics, exemplifying the artist’s creative output over the twenty-five years following his early experimentation.

chronicles R. Crumb’s obsessions—from sex to the Bible, music, politics, and the vicissitudes and obscenities of daily life. 

R. Crumb Collection

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