Published by JRP|Ringier. Edited by Raphael Gygax, Heike Munder. Text by Martha Buskirk, Raphael Gygax, Carey Young, Tirdad Zolghadr.
Subject to Contract offers the first overview of London-based artist Carey Young’s (born 1970) works from 2003 to 2010. Many of Young’s pieces investigate how language is transformed by culture, and span a variety of media including video, performance, text and installation.
Published by UCCA/Hinabook/World Publishing Company, Beijing. Edited by Philip Tinari. Text by Zhang Li, Nataline Colonnello, Raphael Gygax.
This catalogue accompanies the 2013 retrospective exhibition of Chinese painter Wang Xingwei (born 1969), reproducing about a third of his total output since 1991. Wang’s famously amusing yet subversive works are organized into three sections, according to the positioning of the subject (frontal, rear, profile).
Published by JRP|Ringier/Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst. Edited by Raphael Gygax. Text by Gabriele Brandstetter, Lynn Garafola, Nicola Gess, Raphael Gygax, Sigrid Weigel.
Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring was premiered in 1913 by Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes under the choreography of Vaslav Nijinsky, in the Théâtre des Champs Élysées in Paris. To this day it is considered the biggest theater scandal of the twentieth century. With its revolutionary score and choreography, The Rite of Spring can be seen as one of modernism's great breakthrough events, and it is the most choreographed ballet in the world. Addressing the ballet's context and history, this anthology includes a selection of archival documentation alongside contributions by artists and performers Eleanor Antin, Marc Bauer, Dara Friedman, Millicent Hodson and Kenneth Archer, Karen Kilimnik, Sara Masüger, Vaslav Nijinksy, Silke Otto-Knapp, Yvonne Rainer and Babette Mangolte, Lucy Stein, Alexis Marguerite Teplin, Julie Verhoeven and Mary Wigman, among others.
Published by JRP|Ringier. Edited by Raphael Gygax, Heike Munder. Text by Raphael Gygax, Brian Price, John David Rhodes, Laurence A. Rickels, Keston Sutherland.
Apologies is the first monograph on Berlin-based artist Stephen G. Rhodes (born 1977), looking at works from the last ten years. Rhodes’ multimedia installations are often based on American cultural references such as the Uncle Remus stories that he politicizes through references to slavery.
Published by Moderne Kunst Nürnberg. Edited by Stefan Banz. Text by Raphael Gygax, Judith Welter, Christoph Doswald, Soledad Garcia.
Inspired by Marcel Duchamp’s miniaturization of his oeuvre for his “Box in a Suitcase,” Norbert Bisky repainted his most significant painting of each year from 2001 to 2011 on 5 x 2 inch canvases on the occasion of his exhibition at the Kunsthalle Marcel Duchamp in Switzerland. This volume reproduces all of the works in full color, along with commentary by Bisky.
The Poltergeist Experimental Group PEG Applied Spirituality and Physical Spirit Manifestation
Published by JRP|Ringier. Edited by Raphael Gygax, Heike Munder. Text by Alexandra Blaettler, Raphael Gygax.
Swiss artist Florian Germann (born 1978) deploys sculptures, objects and scientific apparatus for his elaborate grand narratives, many of which deal with occult themes such as poltergeists and werewolves.
Published by JRP|Ringier. Edited by Raphael Gygax, Heike Munder. Text by Verena Kuni, Philip Auslander, Kristina Köhler.
Between Zones explores the possibilities of documenting time-based works. Examining the intersection of disciplines such as sculpture and installation, or reproducible media, such as film and photography, with the fields of dance, music and performance art, this publication outlines the theoretical underpinnings of these relationships. Based on her own practice as a documenter of the Judson Dance Theater, Babette Mangolte examines the relationship between movement and speed in the filming of performative processes; Raphael Gygax posits the notion that performances, their installation venues and the objects involved may be read as rituals, places of ritual and relics; and Verena Kuni investigates themes of temporality and transience in art, sound and music. These represent just a sampling of the diverse essays included in this book, by a range of scholars and practitioners in the performance fields.
Published by JRP|Ringier. Edited by Raphael Gygax, Heike Munder. Text by Raphael Gygax, Bruce Hainley, Glenn R. Phillips.
Since the mid-1990s, Alex Bag (born 1969) has been among the leading protagonists of video performance, regarded as a vital precursor by a generation of younger artists such as Cory Arcangel or Shana Moulton. Bag became known for her video performances, in which she humorously critiqued TV culture and the clichés of the contemporary art world. An extraordinarily flexible actress, Bag often appeared herself, taking on a multitude of roles. In the video that gained her initial recognition, “Untitled Fall `95” (1995), she played an art student who, as though in a video diary, depicted her desires and hopes as an artist and in her everyday schooling. In other videos she has frequently investigated the advertising structures of network TV (as in “Coven Services,” 2004), or the most diverse TV genres and formats (“Fancy Pantz,” 1997, “Gladia Daters,” 2005). This first Alex Bag monograph includes a complete videography with transcriptions, scripts and stills.
Published by JRP|Ringier. Edited by Raphael Gygax. Text by Thomas Beard, Ed Halter.
The works of young American artists Cory Arcangel, Shana Moulton, Jessica Ciocci & Jacob Ciocci of Paper Rad, and Ryan Trecartin & Lizzie Fitch are all characterized by an overwhelming color-charged aesthetic, unhinged narratives and a deluge of content that pitches itself against the excesses of consumer culture. Brought together for this publication, their works define a new idiom of energetic critique.
Published by JRP|Ringier. Edited by Raphael Gygax, Heike Munder.
Dawn Mellor takes popular female icons like Madonna, Courtney Love, Britney Spears and even Hillary Clinton, and paints them into narratives in which the artist herself plays a fictional role--as a sadistic voyeur, a pathological pornographer, or a murderous stalker. Mellor's blackly humorous scenarios are rendered in a style that simultaneously evokes Surrealism, Pop art and the underground trashiness of a Joe Coleman.
Published by JRP|Ringier. Edited by Raphael Gygax. Illustrated by Andro Wekua, Rita Ackermann.
Writer Sibylle Berg has the eye of an entomologist: Under her gaze, humanity falls into a taxonomy of wretched characters, full of dramas and impossible dreams--though she always manages to carry them through their travails with a dose of empathy and a sense of humor. In this novella, previously unpublished in English, Berg boldly relates the lives of two children growing up in East Germany. They communicate through the things that were not said, the projects that came to nothing, their loneliness, boredom and confinement. The story allows for positive endings, but is no average coming of age narrative. Berg was born in Weimar in 1962, and though she currently lives in Zurich, she is still heralded as one of Germany’s most provocative writers. This beautifully produced, small-edition volume includes illustrations by Swiss artist, Andro Wekua and American Rita Ackermann.
Published by JRP|Ringier. Edited by Raphael Gygax, Heike Munder.
The UK-based artist Spartacus Chetwynd is known for her baroque, surreal performances that humorously bring together multiple visual references from art history and pop culture. One of Chetwynd's 2007 site-specific performances, sponsored by New York's Creative Time, was titled: "Soylent Green, King Kong, Kasuma & Paul Auster Improvs." She liberally mixes references like Yves Klein's Anthropometries and Hieronymous Bosch characters with heavy metal and Michael Jackson's Thriller, somehow producing a unified whole that is evocative of how our culture disseminates information. As well as performances, Chetwynd who graduated from the Royal College of Art with an MFA in painting, produced a series of small canvases in 2004 and 2005 entitled Bat Opera. They also quote pop culture, while featuring obscure bits of Romanticism gleaned from art history and literature. A well-designed introduction to this emerging artist’s work, this volume is printed on 12 differently colored papers.
Published by JRP|Ringier. Edited by Raphael Gygax.
Twenty-five years ago, the first 8-bit Nintendo console went on the market; now most home computers have hundreds of thousands of times that power. Arcangel, who is 27 this year, is a full-fledged member of the generation that grew up on home video games. With Beige, a collective of fellow programmers, he has embarked on a hacker's nostalgia trip: his return to Super Mario Brothers removes all of the action to leave a landscape of blue sky and puffy clouds; Shoot Andy Warhol is a working video game in which viewers gain points for hitting Warhol and lose them by accidentally shooting Colonel Sanders, the Pope or Flavor Flav instead. Arcangel appropriates and rewrites electronic history, and his accessible sites and published code offer viewers tools for action in a reality that is less and less tangible, through a field that has come to dominate our daily lives. Arcangel's work was shown at the 2004 Whitney Biennial.
Wang Xingwei
Sacré 101: An Anthology on The Rite of Spring
Stephen G. Rhodes: Apologies
Norbert Bisky: A Retrospective
Florian Germann
Between Zones
Alex Bag
Deterioration, They Said
Dawn Mellor
Sibylle Berg: By The Way, Did I Ever Tell You...
Spartacus Chetwynd
Cory Arcangel: Beige