Museum Exhibition Catalogues, Monographs, Artist's Projects, Curatorial Writings and Essays
"[The visionary cosmology in my work] stems from a desire to put things in context. I want that to be the way people look at the painting. I'm not necessarily making them to be epic, but the scales are big and there are many things going on. You can go from one point to the other and each point has a stage of importance. It mimics the way we operate in the bigger organism of our families, our villages, our cities, our time, our history. It's about putting everything in context." Julie Mehretu, excerpted from Julie Mehretu: Black City, Hatje Cantz.
Julie Mehretu was born in Ethiopia in 1970 and has lived in Michigan, Senegal, Rhode Island and New York. Her work has appeared in the 2004 Whitney Biennial and at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and has been the subject of a solo show at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Mehretu is the recipient of a 2001 Penny McCall Award for Visual Art.
Published by Marsilio Arte. Edited with text by Caroline Bourgeois. Text by Patricia Falguières, Hilton Als, Jason Moran, Julie Mehretu.
This catalog is published in conjunction with a major exhibition dedicated to the work of American artist Julie Mehretu (born 1970), spotlighting more than 60 paintings, drawings and prints, from the past 25 years—several of which were painted in the last two. Her sensual and emotional compositions are imbued with palimpsestic and inventive marks that emerge from a dense, multilayered and complex set of references: art historical and sociopolitical, geographical, contemporary and personal. Mehretu’s practice has also always engaged in various forms of collaboration and sustained conversation with fellow artists. Fittingly, then, this catalog presents Mehretu’s work alongside that of the artists and writers Nairy Baghramian, Huma Bhabha, Robin Coste Lewis, Tacita Dean, David Hammons, Paul Pfeiffer and Jessica Rankin.
Published by Mousse Publishing. Text by Suzanne Cotter, Amin Maalouf, Marina Warner.
With new photography documenting Julie Mehretu’s (born 1970) studio process, plus details and large-scale reproductions of paintings and drawings, and essays by renowned authors, this book documents her richly layered visual universe.
Published by Guggenheim Museum Publications. Text by Joan Young, Brian Dillon.
American artist Julie Mehretu is celebrated for her large-scale paintings and drawings that layer abstract forms with familiar architectural imagery. Inspired by historical photographs, urban-planning grids, modernist structures and graffiti, these semi-abstract works explore the intersections of power, history, dystopia and the built environment, and their impact on identity formation. This volume marks the exhibition of a new series of works commissioned by Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin. In conjunction with this project, Mehretu established a studio in Berlin where she produced a remarkable suite of paintings that deal with erasure and decay. Addressing what it means to be an American artist in Germany during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars under the Bush administration, Mehretu's canvases meditate on the idea of the modern ruin. Featuring essays by Joan Young and Brian Dillon, this monograph includes a section of photographs tracing the development of the series in the artist's Berlin studio.
Published by Detroit Institute of Arts. Foreword by Graham W.J. Beal. Text by Rebecca Hart, Kinsey Katchka, Siemon Allen.
In her celebrated large-scale paintings, which are built up with layers of acrylic paint on canvas and overlaid with gestural pen and ink marks, Ethiopian-born, New York-based artist Julie Mehretu explores issues of mobility, social organization, political entanglement and global competition. Featured in this crisply designed volume are five new works from her city-specific series City Sitings, Detroit-related and all created for her exhibition at that city's Institute of Arts. The series references the history of painting while simultaneously mapping multiple, often conflicting, experiences of the urban landscape. Embedded in the seemingly abstract compositions are such referential elements as architectural blueprints and commercial logos. Making use of addition and erasure, Mehretu's process mirrors that of urban change itself. Collapsing the particular energy and history of a city, Mehretu gives the viewer a new perspective on his or her own surroundings.
PUBLISHER Detroit Institute of Arts
BOOK FORMAT Hardcover, 8.5 x 11 in. / 88 pgs / 29 color.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 2/1/2009 Out of print
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: SPRING 2009 p. 54
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9780895581617TRADE List Price: $40.00 CDN $50.00
Published by Hatje Cantz. Text by Agustin Perez Rubio, Marcus Steinweg, Cay Sophie Rabinowitz.
Life has taken Julie Mehretu from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to New York the long way. Now the New York Times writes that her canvases--multilayered, futuristic visual worlds where historical and fictional landscapes meet--"make history painting important again." Each one pulls from diverse sources, noteworthy among them Japanese manga, Chinese landscape art, Ethiopian illuminated books, Baroque engraving in the style of Dürer, graffiti and the geometric abstractions of Kazimir Malevich and Vasily Kandinsky. And they are often structured on architectural drawing, which appeals to Mehretu "because there is no way that you could make architecture that doesn't work." Plans for buildings are metaphors "for systems, for rational efforts to construct the world that we exist within, even though so many things happen in a very organic or irrational way." These angular architectural spaces swarm with organic forms, with communities marching to war, confronting systems and creating elaborate new civilizations. Human relationships unfold, interacting with the built and controlled world. Of her interest in these warring factions and in the "aggressive and forceful nature of history," Mehretu says that, "most of my personal ancestry comes from different cultures that, at one time or another, were at war." This is the first comprehensive monograph on a strong new talent in contemporary painting.
Published by Walker Art Center. Artwork by Julie Mehretu. Edited by Douglas Fogle. Contributions by Olukemi Ilesanmi.
Incorporating the dynamic visual vocabulary of maps, urban planning grids, and architectural forms, alternating between historical narratives and fictional landscapes, Julie Mehretu's beautifully layered paintings and drawings combine abstract forms with the familiar, pairing the Roman Coliseum with floor plans from international airports, Le Corbusier's unbuilt megacity with blueprints from Zaha Hadid and Tadao Ando, and dashing it all together with a color field full of abstract geometry. What does a city in motion look like? The closest picture of it exists in Mehretu's semiabstractions, their maelstroms of color and line, power, history, globalism and personal narrative frozen, swirled and encased in coats of accumulated resin.
PUBLISHER Walker Art Center
BOOK FORMAT Paperback, 9 x 12 in. / 56 pgs / 15 color
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 10/2/2003 No longer our product
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: SPRING 2003
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9780935640748TRADE List Price: $24.95 CDN $27.50
Julie Mehretu: A Universal History of Everything and Nothing
Julie Mehretu: Grey Area
Julie Mehretu: City Sitings
Julie Mehretu: Black City
Julie Mehretu