Gerald Matt

ACTIVE BACKLIST

THE CIRCUS AS A PARALLEL UNIVERSE
MODERNE KUNST NüRNBERG
ISBN: 9783869843179 | US $65.00
Pub Date: 8/31/2012
Active | In stock

KEITH HARING: 1978-1982
MODERNE KUNST NüRNBERG
ISBN: 9783869843131 | US $45.00
Pub Date: 8/30/2012
Active | In stock

URS FISCHER: SKINNY SUNRISE
Interview by Gerald Matt.
KIITO-SAN
ISBN: 9780984721023 | US $30.00
Pub Date: 7/31/2012
Active | Awaiting stock

NO FASHION, PLEASE!
Edited by Gerald A. Matt, Peter Weiermair. Text by Eugenio Viola, Peter Weiermair.
MODERNE KUNST NüRNBERG
ISBN: 9783869842691 | US $55.00
Pub Date: 4/30/2012
Active | In stock

VANITY
MODERNE KUNST NüRNBERG
ISBN: 9783869842707 | US $45.00
Pub Date: 4/30/2012
Active | In stock

THE CABINET OF JAN SVANKMAJER
MODERNE KUNST NüRNBERG
ISBN: 9783869842561 | US $55.00
Pub Date: 4/30/2012
Active | Awaiting stock

LE SURREALISME C'EST MOI!
MODERNE KUNST NüRNBERG
ISBN: 9783869842332 | US $68.00
Pub Date: 4/30/2012
Active | In stock

SPACE
Edited by Gerald Matt, Cathérine Hug. Text by Walter Famler, Michail Ryklin, Justin Hoffmann.
MODERNE KUNST NüRNBERG
ISBN: 9783869841755 | US $60.00
Pub Date: 8/31/2011
Active | In stock

CLIFTON CHILDREE: FUCK THAT CHICKEN FROM POPEYES
Text by Synne Genzmer, Gerald Matt.
MODERNE KUNST NüRNBERG
ISBN: 9783869842011 | US $30.00
Pub Date: 8/31/2011
Active | In stock

ANDRO WEKUA: PINK WAVE HUNTER, 3 VOLUMES
Edited by Rein Wolfs, Gerald Matt, Andrea Bellini.
WALTHER KöNIG, KöLN
ISBN: 9783865609618 | US $49.95
Pub Date: 6/30/2011
Active | In stock

MCDERMOTT & MCGOUGH: NO. 26 SANDYMOUNT AVENUE
Edited by Gerald Matt, Sandra Huber. Interview by Gerald Matt.
MODERNE KUNST NüRNBERG
ISBN: 9783869841533 | US $45.00
Pub Date: 4/30/2011
Active | In stock

BRUCE CONNER: THE 70S
MODERNE KUNST NüRNBERG
ISBN: 9783869841601 | US $60.00
Pub Date: 4/30/2011
Active | In stock

STREET AND STUDIO
VERLAG FüR MODERNE KUNST
ISBN: 9783869840161 | US $55.00
Pub Date: 12/31/2010
Active | In stock

THE PORTRAIT
Text by Peter Weiermair, Ulrich Pohlmann. Foreword by Gerald Matt.
VERLAG FüR MODERNE KUNST
ISBN: 9783941185609 | US $60.00
Pub Date: 12/31/2010
Active | In stock

THOMAS RUFF: SURFACES, DEPTHS
VERLAG FüR MODERNE KUNST NüRNBERG
ISBN: 9783941185500 | US $60.00
Pub Date: 11/30/2009
Active | Awaiting stock

WANGECHI MUTU: IN WHOSE IMAGE
Text by Angela Stief. Interview by Gerald Matt.
VERLAG FüR MODERNE KUNST NüRNBERG
ISBN: 9783941185067 | US $25.00
Pub Date: 11/30/2009
Active | Awaiting stock

ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS
VERLAG FüR MODERNE KUNST NüRNBERG
ISBN: 9783941185357 | US $45.00
Pub Date: 11/30/2009
Active | In stock

EDWARD HOPPER: WESTERN MOTEL
Edited by Norbert Schmitz, Gabriel Ramin Schor. Text by Carter Foster, Gerald Matt.
VERLAG FüR MODERNE KUNST NüRNBERG
ISBN: 9783940748515 | US $75.00
Pub Date: 6/30/2009
Active | In stock

INTERVIEWS VOLUME 2: BY GERALD MATT
WALTHER KöNIG, KöLN
ISBN: 9783865603654 | US $45.00
Pub Date: 6/1/2008
Active | In stock

RICKY SWALLOW: YOUNGER THAN YESTERDAY
Text by Sabine Folie, Gerald Matt.
VERLAG FüR MODERNE KUNST NüRNBERG
ISBN: 9783939738893 | US $25.00
Pub Date: 9/1/2008
Active | In stock

INTERVIEWS VOLUME 1 BY GERALD MATT
WALTHER KöNIG, KöLN
ISBN: 9783865601889 | US $40.00
Pub Date: 7/1/2007
Active | In stock

CHEN ZHEN: THE BODY AS A LANDSCAPE
Preface by Matt Gerald. Text by Ken Lum, Maité Vissault, Wang Min An.
VERLAG FUR MODERNE KUNST NURNBERG
ISBN: 9783939738305 | US $40.00
Pub Date: 8/1/2007
Active | Awaiting stock

AMERICANS: THE SOCIAL LANDSCAPE FROM 1940 UNTIL 2006
Text by Peter Weiermair. Contribution by Gerald Matt.
DAMIANI
ISBN: 9788889431689 | US $50.00
Pub Date: 3/1/2007
Active | Not available

DON JUAN
VERLAG FUR MODERNE KUNST NURNBERG
ISBN: 9783938821367 | US $35.00
Pub Date: 8/15/2006
Active | In stock

BLACK, BROWN, WHITE
Essays by Gerald Matt, Thomas Mie?gang and Jyoti Mistri.
VERLAG FUR MODERNE KUNST NURNBERG
ISBN: 9783938821336 | US $45.00
Pub Date: 8/15/2006
Active | Awaiting stock

LOUISE BOURGEOIS: ALLER-RETOUR
Essays by Gerald Matt, Phillip Larrat-Smith and Peter Weiermeier.
VERLAG FUR MODERNE KUNST NURNBERG
ISBN: 9783938821190 | US $50.00
Pub Date: 8/15/2006
Active | Not available

ULRIKE OTTINGER: IMAGE ARCHIVE
Essays by Catherine David, Michael Oppitz, Katharina Sykora, Laurence A. Rickels and Gerald Matt.
VERLAG FUR MODERNE KUNST NURNBERG
ISBN: 9783938821152 | US $60.00
Pub Date: 4/1/2006
Active | In stock

EVA HESSE: TRANSFORMATIONS - THE SOJOURN IN GERMANY 1964/65 & DATEBOOKS 1964/65
Introduction by Gerald Matt. Essays by Sabine Folie and Georgia Holz.
WALTHER KöNIG, KöLN
ISBN: 9783883758008 | US $60.00
Pub Date: 5/2/2004
Active | Awaiting stock

OUT OF PRINT LISTING

CARLO MOLLINO: UN MESSAGGIO DALLA CAMERA OSCURA
Edited by Gerald A. Matt. Text by Napoleone Ferrari, Lucas Gehrmann, Gerald A. Matt.
MODERNE KUNST NüRNBERG
ISBN: 9783869842448 | US $50.00
Pub Date: 4/30/2012
Out of Print | Not available

KEITH HARING: 1978-1982
MODERNE KUNST NüRNBERG
ISBN: 9783869841045 | US $60.00
Pub Date: 4/30/2011
Out of Print | Not available

MARILYN MANSON & DAVID LYNCH: GENEALOGIES OF PAIN
Text by Cathérine Hug, David Galloway, Gerald Matt, Adrian Notz.
MODERNE KUNST NüRNBERG
ISBN: 9783869841298 | US $40.00
Pub Date: 4/30/2011
Out of print | Not available

DREAM AND TRAUMA
HATJE CANTZ
ISBN: 9783775720649 | US $50.00
Pub Date: 2/1/2008
Out of print | Not available

RAYMOND PETTIBON: WHATEVER IT IS YOU'RE LOOKING FOR, YOU WON' T FIND IT HERE
Interview by Rudolf Reust. Text by Thomas Mießgang, Gerald Matt, Edward Dimendberg.
VERLAG FUR MODERNE KUNST NURNBERG
ISBN: 9783938821909 | US $45.00
Pub Date: 3/1/2007
Out of print | Not available

ASSUME VIVID ASTRO FOCUS: OPEN CALL
Text by Gerald Matt, Angela Stief.
VERLAG FUR MODERNE KUNST NURNBERG
ISBN: 9783938821848 | US $12.00
Pub Date: 3/1/2007
Out of print | Not available

ARTAVAZD PELESCHIAN: OUR CENTURY
Essays by Paul Virilio, Constantin Wulff, and François Niney. Preface by Gerald Matt.
KERBER
ISBN: 9783936646603 | US $40.00
Pub Date: 8/2/2004
Out of print | Not available

PUBLIC ART
Edited by Florian Matzner.
HATJE CANTZ PUBLISHERS
ISBN: 9783775791489 | US $35.00
Pub Date: 4/2/2004
Out of print | Not available

CAPITAL & KARMA
HATJE CANTZ PUBLISHERS
ISBN: 9783775712163 | US $35.00
Pub Date: 2/2/2003
Out of print | Not available

TRACEY MOFFATT
Artwork by Tracey Moffatt. Edited by Martin Hentschel. Contributions by John Yau, Gerald Matt.
CANTZ
ISBN: 9783893224234 | US $29.95
Pub Date: 7/2/1998
Out of print | Not available

Gerald Matt

The Circus as a Parallel Universe

Preface by Gerald A. Matt. Text by Birgit Peter, Matthias Christen, Verena Konrad. Interview by Gerald A. Matt, Verena Konrad.
Published by Moderne Kunst Nürnberg

The Circus as a Parallel Universe takes the circus as a metaphor for the art world--a platform for transgression against the existing world order. Artists brought forward to exemplify this perspective include Diane Arbus, Matthew Barney, Alexander Calder, Roni Horn, Bruce Nauman, Ulrike Ottinger, Marion Peck, Ugo Rondinone, Joe Scanlan and Cindy Sherman.

Keith Haring: 1978-1982

Edited by Gerald A. Matt, Raphaela Platow. Preface by Gerald A. Matt. Text by Pedro Alonzo, Bill Arning, Synne Genzmer, Raphaela Platow.
Published by Moderne Kunst Nürnberg

Situated in that explosive mini-era from 1978 to 1982 in New York, this monograph explores the early and most experimental period in the career of Keith Haring (1958–1990). Its narrative commences with a portrait of the vigorous studio practice Haring had already established after enrolling in New York’s School of Visual Arts, and tracks his metamorphosis into an ultra-prolific artist creating political public art on downtown streets and responding to the city’s graffiti culture, intent on making art that would thrive outside the boundaries of institutions. Reproduced throughout are rarely seen drawings and sketchbooks, video stills, flyers, posters, photographs, subway drawings, word collages, texts and diaries. The evolution of Haring’s visual vocabulary in these years is explored, through his cornucopia of influences, ranging from Jean Dubuffet, Pierre Alechinsky, Jackson Pollock and Henri Matisse to William Burroughs, Dr. Seuss and Walt Disney. Haring’s heroes directly informed his development of interlocking geometric shapes, comic-inspired narrative storyboards and humor-infused homoerotic tableaux. Keith Haring: 1978–1982 unfolds the nascent career of this tireless creator, philosopher, agitator and activist, one of the most influential and popular artists of the twentieth century.

Urs Fischer: Skinny Sunrise

Interview by Gerald Matt.
Published by Kiito-San

Documenting Urs Fischer’s solo exhibition of the same title at the Kunsthalle Wien in 2012, Skinny Sunrise presents a survey of the artist’s oeuvre. Among the new sculptures produced for the exhibition is Fischer’s first candle self-portrait, which is set alight and slowly burns down before our eyes, in the fashion of his acclaimed installation at the Arsenale di Venezia, which was described by the Financial Times as “the single most stunning new piece anywhere” in the 2011 Biennale.

No Fashion, Please!

Photography Between Gender and Lifestyle

Edited by Gerald A. Matt, Peter Weiermair. Text by Eugenio Viola, Peter Weiermair.
Published by Moderne Kunst Nürnberg

The title may say “please,” but the 19 artists featured here are anything but polite in their rejection of traditional notions of fashion, gender and beauty. The media strategies employed are manifold, from staged photographic images, projections and performances to body sculptures, video and film. From Jeff Bark’s painterly and perverse “Flesh Rainbow” to Sophia Wallace’s portraits of feminized male models, these daring and reckless experiments veer closer to the ceremonies and rituals of body art than to fashion, and reinvent the red-carpet question: “who are you wearing?” Participating artists include Chan-Hyo Bae, Tracey Baran, Jeff Bark, Leigh Bowery/Fergus Greer, Steven Cohen/Marianne Greber, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Matthias Herrmann, Lea Golda Holterman, Izima Kaoru, Luigi & Luca, Sandra Mann, Martin & The evil eyes of Nur, Brigitte Niedermair, Erwin Olaf, Alex Prager, Hanna Putz, Viviane Sassen, Sophia Wallace and Bruce Weber.

Vanity

Fashion Photography from the F. C. Gundlach Collection

Edited by Gerald A. Matt, F.C. Gundlach, Synne Genzmer. Interview by Gerald A. Matt. Text by Isabelle Azoulay, Synne Genzmer, Fréderick Monneyron.
Published by Moderne Kunst Nürnberg

In capturing and choreographing the ephemeral postures, gestures, facial expressions and clothes that compose our conceptions of beauty, fashion photography documents the evolution of culture itself and mirrors an era’s attitude toward life. Vanity Fair presents some 200 works of fashion photography from the F.C. Gundlach Collection, one of the most comprehensive private photography collections in the German-speaking world. Landmark photographs are set alongside unknown pictures, from the late 1920s through the Second World War up to the present day. Among the photographers included are Richard Avedon, Lillian Bassman, Cecil Beaton, Sibylle Bergemann, Erwin Blumenfeld, Guy Bourdin, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Ralph Gibson, F.C. Gundlach, Horst P. Horst, George Hoyningen-Huene, William Klein, Nick Knight, David LaChapelle, Edgar Leciejewski, Zoe Leonard, Leon Levinstein, Peter Lindbergh, Gjon Mili, Sarah Moon, Armin Morbach, Irving Penn, Melvin Sokolsky, Deborah Turbeville, Yva, Imre von Santho and Wols.

The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer

The Pendulum, the Pit, and other Pecularities

Edited by Ursula Blickle, Gerald A. Matt. Text by Gaby Hartel, Norbert M. Schmitz, Bert Rebhandl. Interview by by Gerald A. Matt.
Published by Moderne Kunst Nürnberg

Jan Svankmajer (born 1934) is one of the most celebrated animation filmmakers in the world. Widely imitated and hugely influential for several generations of directors and animators, including Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam and the Brothers Quay, Svankmajer populates his surreal universe with sentient household objects, morphing clay figures, grotesquely exaggerated everyday sounds and a mood of paranoia pitched somewhere between Kafka and Poe. Among his best known works are the feature films Alice (1988), Faust (1994) and Conspirators of Pleasure (1996), and the short Dimensions of Dialogue (1982--chosen by Terry Gilliam as one of the ten best animations ever). His most recent film is 2010’s Surviving Life. The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer is the first monographic overview of this major artist’s work. Including excellent film stills, sculptures, illustrations and an interview with the filmmaker, it spans nearly 40 years of visionary creativity.

Le Surrealisme c'est moi!

Hommage to Salvador Dalí

Edited by Gerald A. Matt. Text by Wolfgang Fetz, Belinda Grace Gardner, Synne Genzmer, David Lomas, Gerald A. Matt, Catherine Millet, August Ruhs. Interviews by Gerald A. Matt, Katarzyna Uszynska Lucas Gehrmann, Caroline Corbetta.
Published by Moderne Kunst Nürnberg

More than almost any artist of the twentieth century, Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) made a continuous blur of distinctions between art and life, and between art and commerce. Dalí packaged himself as a mass-media experience that impressed even Andy Warhol, who once said of him, “It’s like being with royalty or circus people.” Yet in spite of his fame, Dalí’s legacy is rarely considered. “Le Surrealisme, c’est moi!” was one of Dalí’s most famous self-aggrandizing statements and it serves as an apt title for this luxuriantly produced, faux-leatherbound catalogue. Here, the ongoing influence of Dalí’s art is traced through subsequent generations, from Louise Bourgeois, Philippe Halsman, Andy Warhol, to Jean-Michel Othoniel, Eric Schaal, Glenn Brown, Markus Schinwald and Francesco Vezzoli. Their works are juxtaposed with a selection of some 70 paintings, drawings and sculptures by Dalí.

Carlo Mollino: Un Messaggio dalla Camera Oscura

Edited by Gerald A. Matt. Text by Napoleone Ferrari, Lucas Gehrmann, Gerald A. Matt.
Published by Moderne Kunst Nürnberg

Carlo Mollino (1905–1973) was possessed of both tremendous energy and incredibly diverse abilities: famed as an architect and furniture designer, he was also a writer, photographer, race-car driver and downhill skier. His private life was no less intense. Mollino had a closely guarded obsession with erotic portraiture, and would regularly invite prostitutes from the streets of Turin to come to his home and pose for him. The scenes were carefully prepared: the models would dress (or partially undress) in costumes, accessories and wigs that Mollino had acquired on trips to France or Southeast Asia, and pose before backdrops of drapery, screens and sculptural furniture. Despite the furtive circumstances of their production, these portraits express the aesthetics of Mollino’s more public photographs, as the models appear more statuesque than pornographic. Likewise, the opulent interiors and opulent furnishings of Mollino’s private homes in Turin, the Villa Zaira and what is now known as Casa Mollino serve as crucial components of the compositions. In 1962, Mollino began to employ Polaroid film for these shoots, eventually making some 1,300 exposures before his death in 1973. Neither these nor the silver gelatin works that preceded them were published in his lifetime, and this is the first publication of these Polaroids.

Space

About a Dream

Edited by Gerald Matt, Cathérine Hug. Text by Walter Famler, Michail Ryklin, Justin Hoffmann.
Published by Moderne Kunst Nürnberg

April 12, 2011 marks the acclaimed fiftieth anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's voyage into space. This volume looks at a huge selection of art and literature inspired by conceptions of outer space, from Sylvie Fleury to Thomas Ruff, Buckminster Fuller to Philip K. Dick. The book is housed in a silkscreened jacket with fluorescent color printing.

Clifton Childree: Fuck that Chicken from Popeyes

Text by Synne Genzmer, Gerald Matt.
Published by Moderne Kunst Nürnberg

Describing himself as “an analogue artist in the digital era,” Clifton Childree makes comic films and installations that celebrate the tawdry glitter and honky-tonk of cheap illusory worlds--both the decor of silent movie theatres and the silent movies themselves. This attractively designed volume looks at his dilapidated installations and the gloriously eccentric films he screens inside them.

Andro Wekua: Pink Wave Hunter, 3 Volumes

Edited by Rein Wolfs, Gerald Matt, Andrea Bellini.
Published by Walther König, Köln

Georgian artist Andro Wekua (born 1977) merges images found in magazines or old photo albums with painting to create multilayered, kaleidoscopic collages. The design for this three-volume catalogue is based on American horror and science-fiction magazines, reflecting recent themes developing in the artist's video and installation work.

Marilyn Manson & David Lynch: Genealogies of Pain

Text by Cathérine Hug, David Galloway, Gerald Matt, Adrian Notz.
Published by Moderne Kunst Nürnberg

With his brutal post-industrial music, theatrical makeup and controversial lyrics about serial killers and Satanism, shock rocker Marilyn Manson has stood as an icon for a generation of dispossessed teens. It is less well known that Manson has been painting pictures since 1999. Genealogies of Pain presents 30 of his paintings, executed over the past ten years. Manson's portraits of cartoonish characters are rendered in delicate pastel colors, but the subject matter accords with his notoriously morbid aesthetic: one figure gnaws off his own fingers, another wears a gas mask. This volume pairs Manson with filmmaker David Lynch, who has also made a living out of mining mankind's darkest carnal fears. Included here are stills from four of Lynch's early short experimental films, Six Men Getting Sick, The Grandmother, The Amputee and The Alphabet, which employ similar themes of physical and psychological trauma. An interview with Manson explores his techniques and relevant art historical traditions.

Keith Haring: 1978-1982

Edited by Gerald Matt, Raphaela Platow. Text by Pedro Alonzo, Bill Arning, Synne Genzmer, Raphaela Platow.
Published by Moderne Kunst Nürnberg

Situated in those explosive mini-era years from 1978 to 1982 in New York, this monograph explores the early and most experimental period in the career of Keith Haring (1958-1990). Its narrative commences with a portrait of the vigorous studio practice Haring had already established after enrolling in New York's School of Visual Arts, and tracks his metamorphosis into an ultra-prolific artist making political public art on downtown streets and responding to the city's graffiti culture, intent on making art that would fall outside the boundaries of the institutions. Reproduced throughout are rarely seen drawings and sketchbooks, video stills, flyers, posters, photographs, subway drawings, word collages, texts and diaries. Keith Haring: 1978-1982 unfolds the nascent career of this tireless creator, philosopher, agitator and activist, one of the most iconic and popular artists of the twentieth century.

McDermott & McGough: No. 26 Sandymount Avenue

Edited by Gerald Matt, Sandra Huber. Interview by Gerald Matt.
Published by Moderne Kunst Nürnberg

David McDermott (born 1952) and Peter McGough (born 1958) met in New York in the 1980s, and soon became known for their total embrace of and immersion in the Victorian era. Since then, McDermott and McGough have explored other time periods with equal commitment, including the 1950s and 1960s. No. 26 Sandymount Avenue focuses on the time-traveling duo's recent cyanotype series of photographs of their former home in Ireland, a residential gesamtkunstwerk furnished with extraordinary period details and still-life vignettes. With its blue leather cover, this artist's book perfectly embodies McDermott and McGough's creation.

Bruce Conner: The 70s

Painting, Drawing, Film

Edited by Gerald Matt, Barbara Steffen. Text by Ursula Blickle, Gerald Matt, Thomas Mießgang, Michelle Silva, Barbara Steffen, Malcolm Turvey.
Published by Moderne Kunst Nürnberg

Few artists have contributed seminal works to as many genres as Bruce Conner (1933-2008). An assemblage artist famed for his use of nylon stockings, he also pioneered the use of found footage and the high-speed film editing now familiar to us from MTV, and was one of the earliest filmmakers to use pop and soul music on his soundtracks. In the 1960s, Conner collaborated with Toni Basil (of "Mickey" fame) on his dance film Breakaway, and in the 1970s with Devo, David Byrne and Brian Eno on music videos. This survey examines the formal parallels between Conner's works as an artist and filmmaker, and looks at drawings, oil and acrylic paintings, lithographs, prints, photograms and photographs alongside three of Conner's best-known films: Breakaway (1966), Crossroads (1976), and Marilyn Times Five (1968-1973).

Street and Studio

From Basquiat to Seripop

Edited by Cathérine Hug, Gerald Matt, Thomas Miessgang. Text by Glenn O'Brien, Dieter Buchhart. Interviews with Rita Ackermann, Charlie Ahearn, Tamra Davis, Ari Marcopoulos, Glenn O'Brien.
Published by Verlag für moderne Kunst

The street as a stage or site of creative action has acquired its own special role in art history: think of Jean-Michel Basquiat, whose work stemmed directly from street culture, or Mark Jenkins irritating pedestrians with his subtle infiltration of human-like sculptures, or the participatory installations of Kader Attia. Each of the 30 artists contributing to this volume has found ways to weave art strategies into the fabric of street culture. Street and Studio focuses on the street as a zone of creativity, and as a source of inspiration to young artists whose lives and art are marked by an urban and mobile lifestyle.

The Portrait

Photography as Stage

Text by Peter Weiermair, Ulrich Pohlmann. Foreword by Gerald Matt.
Published by Verlag für moderne Kunst

Assessing the breadth of present-day photo-portraiture in over 170 color plates, this volume unfolds the relationship between photographer and sitter across the gamut of idioms. Tina Barney, Clegg & Guttmann, Anton Corbijn, Rineke Dijkstra, Bernhard Fuchs, Nan Goldin, Greg Gorman, Peter Hujar, Sally Mann, Robert Mapplethorpe, Hellen von Meene, Helmut Newton, Thomas Ruff, Beat Streuli and Wolfgang Tillmans are among the major contemporary fine-art photographers represented here.

Thomas Ruff: Surfaces, Depths

Edited by Gerald Matt. Text by Catherine Hug, Douglas Fogle, Kurt W. Forster, Gerald Matt. Interview by Gerald Matt with Thomas Ruff.
Published by Verlag für moderne Kunst Nürnberg

Surfaces, Depths is a representative selection of Thomas Ruff's works, over a period that already spans about 25 years, with projects ranging from portraits and interiors to telescope and space probe pictures and "nightsight" photography. Ruff incorporates an extremely wide range of everyday subjects into his experiments--people, architecture, planets, the Internet--and subjects them to all forms of camera technology, so that his work often seems to embody the history of the art as it develops. Ruff has a particular fascination with photographic techniques that appear to erase or leave out the artist's hand, techniques often designed for military or scientific purposes. In a recent series titled Zycles, for example, Ruff constructs his images with the help of mathematical formulas and computer technology, twisting two-dimensional surfaces into the three-dimensional space of vector graphics. Surfaces and Depths focuses on ten of Ruff's total of 18 projects to address this particular ongoing preoccupation with artistic detachment, and the polarities of surface and depth vision in the construction of images. In doing so, it makes the broadest assessment to date of the oeuvre of this tireless innovator.

Wangechi Mutu: In Whose Image

Text by Angela Stief. Interview by Gerald Matt.
Published by Verlag Für moderne Kunst Nürnberg

Kenyan-born Wangechi Mutu makes collage works from such materials as ink, clippings from fashion, porn and popular science magazines, glitter, packing tape and rabbit fur. In her fragmented and grotesque figures, Mutu comments ironically on the stereotypes of exotic femininity, transforming them into freakily distorted human shapes. This volume focuses on Mutu's portraits.

Elevator to the Gallows

Banks Violette and Gerald Matt present Banks Violette, Miles Davis, Dashiell Hammett, John Huston, Weegee

Edited by Gerald Matt. Text by Gaby Hartel, Gerald Matt, Thomas Miessgang, Luc Sante, Harold Schechter, Norbert Schmitz. Interview by Gerald Matt, Banks Violette.
Published by Verlag Für Moderne Kunst Nürnberg

Designed to mimic the look of dimestore crime novels, Elevator to the Gallows juxtaposes works by Banks Violette, Miles Davis, John Huston and Weegee with an essay by Luc Sante.

Edward Hopper: Western Motel

Edward Hopper and Contemporary Art

Edited by Norbert Schmitz, Gabriel Ramin Schor. Text by Carter Foster, Gerald Matt.
Published by Verlag für moderne Kunst Nürnberg

American painter Edward Hopper once said, "Maybe I am not very human--what I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house." Indeed, Hopper's canvases delineate a new physics of Modern public space, in which the zones between people are not charged with responsiveness (affection, animosity, attraction) but with absolute indifference. Whether alone or grouped, Hopper's solitary figures bespeak Modern metropolitan conditions with a clarity that is deepened by his very specific ability to capture architecture, interior space and, of course, light. The legacy of this vision, coupled with Hopper's unique vocabulary, can be seen in the work of numerous artists today, who are also featured here. Among them are Ed Ruscha, Jim Jarmusch, Todd Haynes, Richard Prince, Rachel Whiteread, Jeff Wall, Markus Schinwald, Philip Lorca diCorcia, David Claerbout, Mark Lewis and Tim Eitel.

Interviews Volume 2: By Gerald Matt

Published by Walther König, Köln

The publication at hand is the second volume of interviews recapitulating the conversations I have been able to hold with artists in the course of my work as a director and curator, writes the Kunsthalle Vienna's illustrious Gerald Matt in his foreword to this galvanizing collection. "It reflects and confirms my conviction that interviews within the 'art system' present a particularly suitable form of creating an equal platform of exchange between creators and distributors of art." Featuring conversations with Matthew Barney, Louise Bourgeois, Maurizio Cattelan, Marcel Dzama, Tim Eitel, Barnaby Furnas, Linder, Ryan McGinley, Ricky Swallow and Erwin Wurm, among others, this volume is well illustrated, sophisticated, lively and insightful. It goes a long way toward helping "the image of the 'speechless' visual artist, which--to a certain extent--is still being perpetuated today."

Ricky Swallow: Younger Than Yesterday

Text by Sabine Folie, Gerald Matt.
Published by Verlag für moderne Kunst Nürnberg

London-based Australian artist Ricky Swallow draws upon everything from German Renaissance linden wood carvings to memento mori and contemporary Pop music in his amazingly detailed sculptural and installation works. This volume documents his recent project at Kunsthalle Vienna--which turned the entire project space into a larger-than-life museum display cabinet.

Dream and Trauma

Works from the Dakis Joannou Collection, Athens

Edited by Gerald Matt, Angela Stief, Edelbert Köb. Texts by Elisabeth Bronfen, Edelbert Köb, Gerald Matt, Hilary Rubenstein Hatch, Angela Stief.
Published by Hatje Cantz

Sigmund Freud defined trauma as “an experience which, within a short period of time, presents the mind with an increase of stimulus too powerful to be dealt with or worked off in the normal way.” The subject represses the traumatic experience, which then begins to enter into consciousness through its only other avenue, the dream--or, quite often, the nightmare. In art, psychological pain often finds expression in surrealistic, dreamlike or seemingly absurd images. Thus, the “aesthetics of trauma” makes visible those things that have been repressed, that are depraved or that expose painful wishes, desires or dreams. This provocative collection brings together artworks by some of the most psychologically tapped-in (and, in some cases, unhinged) artists in the contemporary field--all of whom are represented in the world-famous Dakis Joannou Collection of Athens, Greece. They include Cindy Sherman, Paul McCarthy, Pavel Althamer, Maurizio Cattelan, Paul Chan, Nigel Cooke, Gregory Crewdson, Marcel Dzama, Olafur Eliasson, Urs Fischer, Anna Gaskell, Robert Gober, Matt Greene, Jeff Koons, William Kentridge, Paul McCarthy, Tim Noble and Sue Webster, Chris Ofili, Kiki Smith, Nari Ward, Ralf Ziervogel and many others.

Interviews Volume 1 By Gerald Matt

Text by Gerald Matt. Contributions by Matthew Barney, Anri Sala, Tony Matelli, Tracey Moffatt, Shirin Neshat.
Published by Walther König, Köln

During his long and illustrious career as a curator, Gerald Matt, the current Director of Kunsthalle Vienna, had many insightful conversations with the top artists of the day. Gathered here are 40 interviews with contemporary artists including Matthew Barney, Vanessa Beecroft, Candice Breitz, Steve McQueen, Shirin Neshat, Raymond Pettibon, Santiago Sierra, Francesco Vezzoli and Yang Fudong, among others, accompanied by numerous color illustrations of each artist's work. According to Matt, "The interviews gathered together in this volume attempt to provide a panoramic overview of contemporary artistic production modes without demystifying the aesthetic puzzle with hasty answers. The point here is not to exhibit shut and dried views of the world but to sketch open systems that admit some space for continuing discourse. Allow yourself to be carried forward by the flow of words without expecting exhaustive help for your life. Entirely in keeping with the motto that Raymond Pettibon wrote on one of his drawings: 'Whatever you are looking for, you won't find it here.'"

Chen Zhen: The Body as a Landscape

Preface by Matt Gerald. Text by Ken Lum, Maité Vissault, Wang Min An.
Published by Verlag Fur Moderne Kunst Nurnberg

Chen Zhen (1955-2000) was among the members of the Chinese avant-garde who chose exile over political repression. In 1986, he left home for Paris, where, after a few years of seclusion, he began to show pioneering work he called "open sculpture," which found swift international acclaim. Chen Zhen's pieces often presented utopias of multicultural dialogue, poetic landscapes full of unusual material alliances, hybrids and new connections between Eastern traditions and the Western artistic vocabulary. That fundamentally personal approach, in echoing his own spiritual seeking and cultural homelessness, radiates enormous power. Later the artist fused his chosen exile, his illness and traditional Chinese medicine, surveying and synergizing the relationships that define the social body. Works like "Lumière innocente," an incandescent cocoon of hospital tubing woven around the frame of an antique crib, and dated 2000, the year of his death, are both elegant and heart-wrenching. This selection of more than 30 drawings, photographic works, sculptures, and installations made between 1978 and 2000 tracks each major phase of the artist's work.

Americans: The Social Landscape From 1940 until 2006

Text by Peter Weiermair. Contribution by Gerald Matt.
Published by Damiani

A bakers' dozen of the best photographers of the past hundred years, from Helen Levitt and Gordon Parks to Nan Goldin and Ryan McGinley, are brought together here in a series of portfolios expanding on Robert Frank's Americans. Together they consider generations of social upheavals, crises, and shifts in U.S. society, responding to societal problems with attitudes from concerned to ecstatic. Helen Levitt's East Village and Bruce Davidson's are the same, and yet nothing alike, as are Richard Avedon's Texas and Rosalind Solomon's New Orleans, Diane Arbus's periphery and Lee Friedlander's loneliness at the center of the world, Peter Hujar's transsexuals and Larry Clark's boys. While the "concerned photography" of the mid-twentieth century can seem to demand the acceptance of the nonconformist behavior it tracks, and the recognition of social ills, the most recent contributions here avoid those moral undertones, documenting the hedonistic cult of youth, its promiscuity and ideology of fun. They do not judge but may provoke viewers into their own judgments, and always to thought.

Assume Vivid Astro Focus: Open Call

Text by Gerald Matt, Angela Stief.
Published by Verlag Fur Moderne Kunst Nurnberg

Assume vivid astro focus (avaf for short) is an artists' collective whose members prefer not to let the public know their names. Their multiple authorship both comments on and evades the cult of personality--it is ostensibly designed to set their art squarely in the public eye, without gossipy biographical distractions, but it has received a lot of attention itself. The avaf works collected here are largely site-specific and in multiple media, including spatial interventions, projections, music programs, drawings and installations, stickers, masks and T-shirts. Motifs of diverse provenance are sampled and mixed, and sources range from Tibetan prayer rugs to softcore porn. Among bits of pop culture and everyday aesthetics, historical and spiritual art, an aesthetic of appropriation and collage emerges. Alice in Wonderland-esque environments, naked people, drag queens, flowers, butterflies and birds of paradise lead to a sensory overload that seems to explode the limits of perception. avaf has recently shown at Tate Liverpool, and was a standout at the 2004 Whitney Biennial.

Raymond Pettibon: Whatever It Is You're Looking For, You Won' t Find It Here

Interview by Rudolf Reust. Text by Thomas Mießgang, Gerald Matt, Edward Dimendberg.
Published by Verlag Fur Moderne Kunst Nurnberg

The by-now widely known cult artist Raymond Pettibon was first recognized outside of the art scene for creating flyers, concert posters and album covers for the independent record label SST, owned by his brother, Greg Ginn. But he soon distanced himself from the Californian hardcore punk scene and developed, sometimes in books, sometimes on single sheets, his "Tragédie humaine," which has continued to chip away at America's understanding of itself, deconstructing popular myths in a disturbing connection of image and text, for many decades now. Pettibon, whose work also includes several feature films and animation works, is a precise artistic observer of the American pop cultural milieux. He finds inspiration in the comic style of Milton Caniff and John Kirby, in 1930s and 40s design, and in the flower-power dreams of later decades, which he gleefully transforms into scenes of bloody massacre. His use of iconic superheroes and super-villains (Batman, Superman, Jesus, Stalin, Charles Manson) as well as several key recurring motifs (trains, penises, surfers, baseball players), in endless variation, creates a visual "remix" as it were. In these black-and-white drawings, which occasionally use red bullet wounds for contrast; in later, color-intensive work, he discovers an enigmatic, cannibalistic world, whose grotesque distortion reveals hidden truths about our own, without completely exposing its secrets. Whatever It Is You're Looking For, You Won't Find It Here includes more than 500 drawings and documentation of a 50-foot long mural, alongside an interview with the artist and two essays.

Louise Bourgeois: Aller-Retour

Essays by Gerald Matt, Phillip Larrat-Smith and Peter Weiermeier.
Published by Verlag Fur Moderne Kunst Nurnberg

Over the past intensely productive decade, Louise Bourgeois's drawings have been dominated by diary-like work in which text and sign often mix. This extensive compendium of that work and its antecedents shares a series design with her recent book of sculpture, and the dialogue between mediums is lively in both titles, which also share a determination to put Bourgeois's current work in the context of her oeuvre, not just her work in other mediums but her work of other eras. Long denied due recognition, Bourgeois became an avant-garde superstar late in life, and is today, at 94, considered "a great figure of the postmodern" (Peter Weiermair). Since the 1980s, her work has followed the prevalent notion of art that rejects universal style and formal understanding in favor of a personal approach. Her central concern lies in establishing an intense, open discussion on the dialectics of thoughts and feelings, on the internal conflict wrought by external relationships. Here, some 150 works are grouped thematically around motifs such as "rivers," "spiders" and "proverbs/aper¡us." A separate retrospective section of older works allows the rest of the book to shift toward the present, which is full of dark and dervish-like activity. Of her prominence, Bourgeois has said, "My luck was that I became famous so late that fame could not destroy me." On the contrary, readers will agree that fame--or is it time?--has invigorated and animated Bourgeois to an exceptional degree.

Black, Brown, White

Photography from South Africa

Essays by Gerald Matt, Thomas Mie?gang and Jyoti Mistri.
Published by Verlag Fur Moderne Kunst Nurnberg

More than 10 years after the end of Apartheid, South Africa is still ravaged by political, medical and, as ever, racial struggle. Violence and crime rates remain extremely high, and critics say that the democratic process hasn't helped the disadvantaged or redistributed wealth, it has only installed a new elite. The contemporary photographers Omar Badsha, David Goldblatt, Bob Gosani, Pieter Hugo, Ranjith Kally, Thando Mama, Santu Mofokeng, Jo Ractliffe, Jurgen Schadeberg, Bernie Searle and Andrew Tshabangu have undertaken to document the new South Africa--the changing and the tenaciously unchanging--in pictures. From David Goldblatt's famous Commuter series on black workers forced to travel from the townships to Johannesburg to Omar Badsha's Imperial Ghetto, a study of the everyday life of inhabitants of Indian descent in the harbor city of Durban, they seek, and find, truths.

Don Juan

Two Plus Two Equals Four or Lust is the Only Deception that I Wish Permanence

Essays by Gerald Matt, Gaby Hartel, Michael Haneke, Peter Handke, Elfriede Jelinek and Olga Neuwirth.
Published by Verlag Fur Moderne Kunst Nurnberg

This study of Don Giovanni, alias Don Juan, includes work from 15 contemporary artists working in video, including Tracey Moffatt, Ugo Rondinone, Erwin Wurm and Sam Taylor-Wood. As E. T. A. Hoffmann would have it, Mozart's Don Giovanni is the "opera of operas"--but who is the Don, and what contemporary relevance does his breathtaking lifestyle have? Sometimes an unscrupulous hedonist, and then again a weak man overwhelmed by desire and despair, he generates a dazzling variety of roles and identities. In the end, everything, even feeling, is exposed as a masquerade, but still he says, "Lust is the only deception that I wish permanence." Images are accompanied by Elfriede Jelinek's radio play Jackie and by interviews with filmmaker Michael Haneke and composer Olga Neuwirth, all in accordance with the motto "Seduce and be seduced, view and be viewed."

Ulrike Ottinger: Image Archive

Essays by Catherine David, Michael Oppitz, Katharina Sykora, Laurence A. Rickels and Gerald Matt.
Published by Verlag Fur Moderne Kunst Nurnberg

Ulrike Ottinger's films and photographs investigate remote corners of the world, such as Mongolia and Ukraine, using both fictional and documentary means. Her associatively connected voyages meander through the peripheries of cities, countries and societies, and against that backdrop capture human splendor and misery, reality and illusion, surface and depth. Her aesthetic tends to the theatrical--literary and historical figures including Dorian Gray and Joan of Arc have been known to make appearances--and to the elaborately decorated, thanks in part to her travels and her passion for collecting. She has archives full of objects and images of all kinds, accumulated on her globetrotting jaunts, and often draws from this stock to mediate issues of gender and character, power and sexuality from many different angles.

Artavazd Peleschian: Our Century

Essays by Paul Virilio, Constantin Wulff, and François Niney. Preface by Gerald Matt.
Published by Kerber

The cinematic oeuvre of Artavazd Peleschian--11 films--is considered one of the most influential of Russian documentary cinema. Shifting between documentary and experiment, between poetry and quotidian life, the work of this reclusive Armenian filmmaker brings image and sound together in an imposing overall composition. He calls his unique editing technique “contrapuntal editing,” and through it achieves tension-filled sequences and sharp image changes, often set to the rhythmic power of music. In the tradition of Dziga Vertov and Sergei Eisenstein, Peleschjan has revived the avant-garde film tradition. But though he was recognized and supported by Jean-Luc Godard in the 60s, his work has remained largely elusive. Nevertheless, it is screened regularly at film festivals and, since the 90s, Peleshian has gained some art world recognition: Paul Virilio included Peleschian's longest work, Our Century (1982), a key role in the exhibition Ce qui arrive at the Fondation Cartier in Paris. Our Century is a grandiose black-and-white film about the dreams and nightmares of the progress of civilization in the twentieth century. It shows what Hannah Arendt recognized in 1968, that progress and catastrophe are flip sides of the same coin. Seasons (1972-75) gives a striking picture of daily life in Armenia, of life caught between progress and tradition, still marked by its dependence on and vulnerability to the forces of nature. The short film Inhabitants (1970) shows, partly through archival footage, partly through images from the filmmaker's own camera, animals of the steppe fleeing from an unspecified but constant threat.

Eva Hesse: Transformations - The Sojourn In Germany 1964/65 & Datebooks 1964/65

Introduction by Gerald Matt. Essays by Sabine Folie and Georgia Holz.
Published by Walther König, Köln

Eva Hesse is best known for the ethereal sculptures she created out of latex and fiberglass, a body of work that shows affinities with the concerns of Minimalism but cannot be easily characterized under any particular art movement. The majority of publications about her too-brief oeuvre have focused almost exclusively on the sculptures she produced after 1965. This slipcased, two-volume edition offers the first pronounced consideration of the transformative time prior to that year. Volume I documents Hesse's production from 1962 to 1966 through reproductions of drawings, collages, sculptures, and plastic reliefs. Volume II presents, for the first time ever, her notebooks from 1964 and 1965, a watershed year in her artistic practice. This primary material is reproduced in its original English (alongside German translations).

Public Art

Edited by Florian Matzner.
Published by Hatje Cantz Publishers

Now in Paperback Everyone is an artist....I am really convinced that humankind will not survive without having realized the social body, the social order, into an artwork. --Joseph Beuys

Few topics in the visual arts in recent years have created such controversy as the debate surrounding the significance and potential of public art. In this massive book, over 50 authors take a critical look at the theme; the result is a fascinating compendium of opinions and statements, experiences and reports. The wide-ranging material by curators, art historians and artists--including Vito Acconci, Daniel Buren, Dan Graham, Hans Haacke, Jenny Holzer, Rebecca Horn, Ilya Kabakov, Kasper Konig, Joseph Kosuth, Richard Serra, Harald Szeemann, Lawrence Weiner and many more--is divided into sections entitled "Art and the City," "Art and Architecture," "Art and History," "Art and Society" and "Art and the Public." First published in 2001 in a bilingual German/English hardcover edition, and now available in an English paperback, Public Art presents an unprecedented abundance of both written and visual information on a vital topic in contemporary art.

Capital & Karma

Recent Positions in Indian Art

Edited by Angelika Fitz, Michael Würgtter, Rahul Mehrotra. Contributions by Gerald Matt, Robin Archer, Arun Kumar. Text by Nancy Adajania, Ranjit Hoskote, Ranjani Mazumdar, Siddharth Varadarajan, Lucas Gehrmann.
Published by Hatje Cantz Publishers

In the past decade, India's cities have been caught in the grip of an enormous push toward globalization, an abrupt internationalization of capital, consumption, and media that has also effected changes in the contexts of Indian contemporary art. Global TV stations, commercials, the Internet, and computer games are becoming important points of reference. Artists have confronted these changes with varying strategies, transferring in this way the media surfaces of "Indian" and "Western" elements into a globalized context of symbols.

Tracey Moffatt

Artwork by Tracey Moffatt. Edited by Martin Hentschel. Contributions by John Yau, Gerald Matt.
Published by Cantz