Yoko Ono

"If one billion people in the world think peace--we'll get peace. You may think, 'well, how are we going to get one billion people to think peace?' Remember, each one of us has the power to change the world. Power works in mysterious ways. You don't have to do much. Visualize the domino effect and just start thinking peace. Thoughts are infectious. Send it out. The message will circulate faster than you think. It's time for action. The action is peace. Spread the word. Spread peace."
Yoko Ono, excerpted from Yoko Ono: Between the Sky and My Head

"Our emotional memory creates reality. And we are totally insecure now, because of the memory of our cruelty and atrocity we exercised on others. The sign is there already. The proof is what we create. We are creating smaller and smaller communication machinery--Blackberry for instance. It's hard for your fingers to work on it. A machinery of communication is one of the most important emotional properties, yet we are doing that. That's because we think we want to shrink--protect ourselves physically. Let's be tiny. Almost invisible. Wouldn't that be nice?!
They say, in the end it will only be cockroaches that survive. It's not that cockroaches will survive, it's us who become cockroaches and survive. That's what I think. We will be cockroaches for our emotional survival. That's what I think."

Excerpted from a conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist in The Conversation Series.

FORTHCOMING & NEW RELEASES

YOKO ONO: TO THE LIGHT
WALTHER KöNIG, KöLN
ISBN: 9783863352219 | US $40.00
Pub Date: 10/31/2012
Active | In stock

ACTIVE BACKLIST

YOKO ONO: THE OTHER ROOMS
CHARTA/WUNTERNAUM PRESS
ISBN: 9788881587551 | US $39.95
Pub Date: 1/31/2010
Active | In stock

HANS ULRICH OBRIST & YOKO ONO: THE CONVERSATION SERIES
Edited by Hans Ulrich Obrist.
WALTHER KöNIG, KöLN
ISBN: 9783865606525 | US $27.00
Pub Date: 3/31/2010
Active | Awaiting stock

YOKO ONO: BETWEEN THE SKY AND MY HEAD
Edited by Thomas Kellein.
WALTHER KöNIG
ISBN: 9783865605313 | US $45.00
Pub Date: 3/1/2009
Active | In stock

YOKO ONO: TOUCH ME
Text by Yoko Ono.
CHARTA
ISBN: 9788881586967 | US $37.95
Pub Date: 2/1/2009
Active | In stock

YOKO ONO: AN INVISIBLE FLOWER
CHIMERA MUSIC
ISBN: 9884035872091 | US $1,500.00
Pub Date: --
Active | Limited quantity

OUT OF PRINT LISTING

YOKO ONO: ODYSSEY OF A COCKROACH
Artwork by Yoko Ono.
DEITCH PROJECTS
ISBN: 9780975324318 | US $15.00
Pub Date: 2/15/2005
Out of Print | Not available

Yoko Ono

For forty years, through music, painting, performance, film and sculpture, Yoko Ono has engaged fundamental issues such as peace, respect and the search for self. This image is from Touch Me a suite of sculptural works activated and realized by the tactile participation of the viewer.

Yoko Ono: To the Light

Foreword by Yoko Ono. Text by Alexandra Munroe. Chrissie Iles. Interview by Julia Peyton-Jones, Hans Ulrich Obrist.
Published by Walther König, Köln

As a pioneering conceptual artist, performance artist, film-maker, poet, musician, writer and peace activist for over five decades, Yoko Ono (born 1933) has influenced several generations of artists, musicians and cultural workers across the globe. Throughout her career, Ono has explored an incredible range of media, coining new kinds of artistic genres--most notably with her instruction pieces, which she began making in the 1950s and continues to devise today. Yoko Ono: To the Light accompanies the artist’s major 2012 overview at the Serpentine Gallery in London (a city to which she has longstanding ties). In her introduction, Ono explains the book and show’s title: “We are now at the 13th hour, facing the future together in which we may destroy ourselves or go on to create our heaven on earth. For the Serpentine Gallery, I selected pieces which had the strongest vibration to take us to the light.” In accord with this utopian emphasis, Ono is also presenting #smilesfilm, a worldwide participatory project, as part of her exhibition. Conceived as a way of connecting people across the world, users are invited to upload images of their smiles via Twitter and Instagram, creating a global string of smiles. Included in this volume are reproductions of installations, films and performances, plus archival material relating to several key early works. Yoko Ono: To the Light is a concise introduction to the vast scope of this era-defining artist’s many endeavors.

Yoko Ono: The Other Rooms

Published by Charta/Wunternaum Press

The Other Rooms is a sequel to Yoko Ono's Grapefruit, a now classic artist's book that was first published in 1964 and became a cult classic following its wider distribution after 1970. Matching the satisfyingly compact size of Grapefruit, and beautifully bound in white cloth, The Other Rooms is conceived as a series of rooms that unfold the story of, in the words of the artist, “the life of a woman seeing through the eyes of her son.” On page after page, or room after room, Ono walks the reader through her unique expression of motherly utopian pedagogy, providing observations and instruction “pieces” such as the following, for “Balance Piece”: a) Politicians should wear pink transparent loose robes or pajama-like outfits without the bottoms at all times. b) A priest should wear a bright red suit with one sleeve and bell-bottom pants with his penis exposed at all times. c) The army should wear drag (cocktail party-type flair skirts) and high-heel shoes with jewelry (earrings, etc.) Other sequences simply describe imaginary rooms, and invite the reader to inhabit them, or suggest new approaches to tasks such as gardening, or to one's hometown, all in the serenely open style for which Ono is so famed. The Other Rooms is joyfully interactive in this sense, finding ways “to open doors… where there are no doors.”

Hans Ulrich Obrist & Yoko Ono: The Conversation Series

Vol. 17

Edited by Hans Ulrich Obrist.
Published by Walther König, Köln

In this volume, Hans Ulrich Obrist elicits from New York art veteran Yoko Ono a portrait of her life and career that is unprecedented in detail. Across five interview sessions, Obrist quizzes Ono about her earliest works in visual art and music in Japan, her musical development in New York, her friendship with John Cage, her Fluxus days, the founding of the new state of Nutopia with John Lennon and her ongoing campaigns for world peace and human rights. Ono also recounts here the genesis of her installations and performances, so many of which have since become classics of their genre. Throughout these discussions with Obrist, in which architects and artists such as Rem Koolhaas and Gustav Metzger also participate, this icon of twentieth-century culture shows herself to be a generous and smart personality, and a multifaceted artist of enormous influence.

Yoko Ono: Between the Sky and My Head

Edited by Thomas Kellein.
Published by Walther König

In 1965, The New York Times called Tokyo-born, New York-based Fluxus artist Yoko Ono "a one person culture explosion." In this generous volume, Ono presents instruction pieces from 1961 to the present, including three scores from her iconic 1964 artist's book, Grapefruit--"Drinking Piece for Orchestra," "Bicycle Piece for Orchestra" and "Painting to Be Slept On"--which are republished here for the first time. Ono has explained the origin of these works: "...sometimes for financial reasons, sometimes for technical difficulties, I could never realize all the ideas which were literally bombarding me. But now, I could just write instructions. It freed me." Also included are more than 100 drawings from Franklin Summer, a series begun in 1994, comprising 1,400 inkblot drawings on paper, and Vertical Memory (1997)--dedicated to Ono's father--a photograph in 21 parts depicting a distorted face. The piece, which Ono considers her best, is a culmination of her life's work.

Yoko Ono: Touch Me

Text by Yoko Ono.
Published by Charta

From the earliest days of her career, Yoko Ono has found practical solutions for dismantling the walls that art throws up around its objects. Her Cut Piece of 1964, reprised in 2003 (and documented herein), remains an ever-relevant act of role reversal and vulnerability. Touch Me is a suite of sculptural works that are activated and completed by the tactile participation of the viewer, with the same conceptual simplicity that characterizes so much of Ono's activity. "Touch Me I," for example, utilizes a sheet of fabric with numerous apertures, through which viewers are encouraged to peer, insert or reveal a body part, photograph it and add the Polaroid to a wall of similar contributions. This book documents these playfully interactive works, as well as other new and historical works by the artist. But--unlike so many books on performance-oriented art, which merely document--it is also a beautifully composed bookwork, reproducing Ono's classic instructions for the execution of her works alongside photographs and comments on the hopes and fears of her art in the present political climate.

Yoko Ono: Odyssey Of A Cockroach

Artwork by Yoko Ono.
Published by Deitch Projects

“The twentieth century was a century in which human experiment in cruelty reached its height. I have decided to be a cockroach for a day, and see what is happening in this city through its eyes.” These words from Yoko Ono, a groundbreaking visionary in the art world for over 50 years, is her manifesto-like description of the thoughts and ideas that went into Odyssey of a Cockroach. This elegant catalogue, with more than 40 color reproductions of the related exhibit, leads its readers through her installation through Ono's exciting narrative.

Yoko Ono: An Invisible Flower

Published by Chimera Music

This special boxed edition of Yoko Ono: An Invisible Flower is a work of previously unpublished pastel drawings and words by Yoko Ono from 1952, reproduced true to the original with SOLEGRAPH digital art printing. The original drawings were made on folded sheets of letter paper. Each box is numbered and signed by Ono.

Not available for trade distribution.

Published by Chimera Library
Printed in Japan
Edition Size: 351 + 5 APs
Box Size: 220mm x 297mm x H40mm
Contents: message x 1, Index x 1, Art x 39 (printed on Japanese paper).