Relational Aesthetics: Recommended Reading List

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  Hayward Publishing Jeremy Deller: Joy in People Remapping social and cultural territories, Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller (born 1966) has alternately taken on the roles of artistic producer, publisher, film-maker, collaborator, curator, parade organizer and cultural archivist. Over the past two decades, he has been a pioneering and highly influential figure in contemporary art, helping to rewrite the rules of artistic practice with his extraordinary collaborative interventions, which have included parades, battle re-enactments and exhibitions of folk art. This comprehensive catalogue is published for Deller’s first major survey exhibition. Employing a wealth of ephemera, critical writing and documentary and artwork photography, this beautiful book is the first and only complete survey of the artist’s multifaceted practice. . . . . [see book details]

  Text by Stuart Hall, Ralph Rugoff, Rob Young. Interview by Matthew Higgs. Hbk, 9 x 11 in. / 214 pgs / 180 color. Publication Date: 5/31/2012 List Price: US $40.00

  Guggenheim Museum Publications Maurizio Cattelan: All Hailed simultaneously as a provocateur, prankster and tragic poet of our times, Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan has created some of the most unforgettable images in recent contemporary art--most notoriously with The Ninth Hour,” his 1999 sculpture of Pope John Paul II struck by a meteorite. Cattelan's subjects range widely, being derived from popular culture, history and organized religion; while bold and irreverent, the work is also deadly serious in its scathing cultural critique. Maurizio Cattelan: All accompanies the Guggenheim Museum's retrospective survey of the artist. For the exhibition, the museum has devised a site-specific installation intended to sidestep the totalizing effect of a retrospective, and for this catalogue the museum has produced an equally unique response to this dilemma and to the conventions of the catalogue format. All is a faux-leather-bound hardcover with gold stamping and thin paper that is designed to resemble an old textbook or bible. The volume catalogues . . . . [see book details]

  By Nancy Spector. Faux leather, 6.25 x 9.5 in. / 255 pgs / illustrated throughout. Publication Date: 11/30/2011 List Price: US $45.00

  Walther König, Köln/Koenig Books Philippe Parreno: Films 1987-2010 Serpentine Gallery Philippe Parreno rose to prominence in the 1990s among a group of artists later gathered under the rubric of Relational Aesthetics. Parreno has sought to redefine the exhibition experience as a coherent object rather than a collection of individual works. In this spirit, his recent exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery constitutes an environment through which the visitor is guided by an orchestration of sound and image. This catalogue for the exhibition examines Parreno’s films, including Invisibleboy (2010), the tale of a Chinese immigrant boy who sees imaginary monsters that are scratched onto the film stock; June 8, 1968 (2009) which revisits the train voyage that transported the corpse of Robert Kennedy from New York to Washington D.C.; and The Boy from Mars (2003), which partly focuses on the generator that supplies the power required to make the film. . . . . [see book details]

  Edited by Karen Marta, Kathryn Rattee, Zoe Stillpass. Foreword by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Julia Peyton-Jones. Texts by Nicolas Bourriaud, Michael Fried, Dorothea von Hantelmann. Hbk, 8.75 x 10 in. / 200 pg / illustrated throughout. Publication Date: 6/30/2011 List Price: US $69.95

  Hatje Cantz Carsten Höller: 2001-2010 184 Objects, Experiments, Events Often associated with "Relational Aesthetics," Carsten Höller has become known for his sensory environments that disrupt prescribed human behavior by twisting perception and logic, and eliciting spontaneous reactions of confusion, loss of direction and euphoria. Los Angeles Times critic Christopher Knight has described Höller's work as being characterized by the extremes of "tight rationality and wild release" rather than "optimal states of existence." The Belgian-born, Stockholm-based artist came to critical attention for his installation "Haus für Schweine und Menschen" ("A House for Swine and People"), made in collaboration with artist Rosemarie Trockel and premiered at 1997's Documenta X, which consists of a concrete structure with windows, through which, by lying on the floor, viewers observe a family of pigs. In this monograph, Höller documents, in chronological order, each of his works dating from 2001 to the present, which are supplemented with interviews. . . . . [see book details]

  Edited by Barbara-Brigitte Mak. Hbk, 9.75 x 11.75 in. / 288 pgs / 795 color. Publication Date: 2/28/2011 List Price: US $75.00

  Hatje Cantz Carsten Höller: Soma Documents In Soma, Belgian artist Carsten Höller (born 1961) traces the myth of the titular healing drink made by Vedic nomads in northern India during the second century BC. Drinking soma was thought to provide access to the divine. This publication collects writings on soma, from the early eighteenth century to the present, on which Höller drew for his most recent hallucinatory installation. . . . . [see book details]

  Edited by Dorothée Brill, Udo Kittelmann. Text by Claude Lévi-Strauss, John Brough. Pbk, 6.75 x 9.5 in. / 128 pgs / 30 color / 19 b&w. Publication Date: 4/30/2011 List Price: US $25.00

  JRP|Ringier Philippe Parreno Philippe Parreno (born 1964) undermines the notion of the discrete, ownable, copyrighted artwork through collaborations with artists such as Douglas Gordon and Pierre Huyghe, performances, dialogue and the cultivation of exhibitions as real-time encounters. This superbly produced monograph, designed by M/M, offers the first substantial inventory of Parreno's work since the late 1980s, covering his multifarious production from film (such as the famous Zidane, a 21st Century Portrait, made with Douglas Gordon, 2006) to spectacle (Il Tempo del Postino, with Hans Ulrich Obrist, 2007). It also includes critical and fictional texts by Maria Lind, Charles Arsène-Henry, Enrique Juncosa and Simon Critchley, as well as an interview by Hans Ulrich Obrist. . . . . [see book details]

  Edited by Christine Macel, Karen Marta. Text by Simon Critchley, Maria Lind, Hans Ulrich Obrist. Hbk, 8.75 x 13.25 in. / 256 pgs / 143 color / 25 b&w. Publication Date: 10/31/2009 List Price: US $65.00

  JRP|Ringier Rirkrit Tiravanija Rirkrit Tiravanija thrives on the interactions between himself and strangers, friends new and old that he encounters on his travels. He insists that art should provide an occasion for geniality and sociability, an insistence that has enriched the environments he has traversed. Conceived as an artist's book, Rirkrit Tiravanija is also the artist's first monograph. It is constructed as a "storyboard" comprised of images from every work produced between 1989 and the present day. In collaboration with the great Paris designers M/M, Tiravanija offers us the most complete evaluation of his work to date, using as narrative backbone his numerous international retrospective exhibitions of 2004 and 2005 (at the Chiang Mai University Art Museum in Thailand, the Munich Kunstverein, the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam, the Musée d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, and the Serpentine Gallery in London). As documentation, this book is an unsurpassed survey that demonstrates . . . . [see book details]

  Edited by Francesca Grassi. Text by Gridthiya Gaweewong, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Rochelle Steiner, Philippe Parreno, Bruce Sterling. Hardcover, 9.5 x 12.5 in. / 218 pgs / 1000 color. Publication Date: 9/1/2007 List Price: US $75.00

  Verlag Fur Moderne Kunst Nurnberg Rirkrit Tiravanija: Soccer Half-time Cookery Book For the World Cup, Rirkrit Tiravanija, the Thai artist known for works that incorporate the provision of ingredients and the cooking of meals for or by viewers, has created a cookbook for halftime. He presents 16 recipes, one for each match in the preliminary rounds, to be prepared and eaten midway through the contest. Cheerful lists and instructions are supplemented by photographs of friends watching football on TV, and Tiravanija incorporates the World Cup motto "time to make friends"--which is dear to his own heart and central to his sociable, intercultural artistic practice--as the book's mission statement. Rirkrit Tiravanija is the winner of the 2004 Hugo Boss prize and recently had a retrospective at the Serpentine Gallery in London. He is represented in New York by Gavin Brown. . . . . [see book details]

  Essays by Raimar Stange and Florian Waldvogel. Paperback, 5 x 9 in. / 64 pgs / 20 color. Publication Date: 8/15/2006 List Price: US $35.00

  Walther König, Köln Hans Ulrich Obrist & Philippe Parreno: The Conversation Series Vol. 14 The French filmmaker and artist Philippe Parreno born in Algeria, has been working and collaborating with curator/thinker/editor Hans Ulrich Obrist for many years; over many projects they have taken huge risks and broken countless conventions together. The conversations gathered here give us a window into a dynamic and forward thinking aesthetic relationship. . . . . [see book details]

  Paperback, 5.25 x 8.25 in. / 154 pgs / illustrated throughout. Publication Date: 3/1/2008 List Price: US $22.00

  JRP|Ringier Liam Gillick: Proxemics Selected Essays, 1988-2000 No less versatile in his writing than in his installations, films, architecture and sculpture, Liam Gillick unites his critical essays in this collection, most of which were originally printed in art magazines or exhibition catalogues. Lauded for his ingenious reinterpretation of Conceptual and Minimalist art, Liam Gillick has often used language, whether in type on a wall or on a page, as a site of artistic, theoretical and political intervention. He reveals himself here as a witness of and major actor in the largely European 1990s art scene that included Philippe Parreno, Pierre Huyghe, Carsten Höller, Angela Bulloch, Douglas Gordon and Rirkrit Tiravanija. A key publication of discussions, references, and artistic engagements of the 1990s, the book also allows an examination of the renewed importance at this time of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, John Baldessari and Allen Ruppersberg. . . . . [see book details]

  Edited by Lionel Bovier. Paperback, 6 x 8.5 in. / 288 pgs. Publication Date: 1/15/2006 List Price: US $22.00

  JRP|Ringier Liam Gillick: Factories in the Snow This new monograph, the first in 10 years to bring together a truly substantial body of Gillick's work, takes as its focus the artist's projects of the last five years, proposing a new reading of his oeuvre. It draws attention to the rigor of the thinking developed in both his sculptural work and his writings, as well as to his sharp visual sense of the structural and formal properties of his materials. Gillick appeared on the scene at the beginning of the 1990s, right in the middle of the YBA phenomenon, and has since had wide exposure in exhibitions like Documenta, Manifesta and the Venice Biennale, and in being nominated for the 2002 Turner prize. . . . . [see book details]

  Essay by Lilian Haberer. Paperback, 9.5 x 11.25 in. / 160 pgs / 120 color. Publication Date: 11/15/2006 List Price: US $45.00

  Fondazione Prada Carsten Höller: Register In an effort to implicate a wider public in the experience and production of art, Carsten Höller employs strategies of direct involvement that help to abolish the barrier between the work of art and the spectator. Sculptures and installations designed for the Fondazione Prada insist on visitor interaction, and the act is reciprocated: the works change progressively through intermittent lights that transmit vibrations to the visitor's body. A hallucinatory subversion of private sensation results, in accord with Höller's aspiration to sabotage the complacencies of everyday life. Complete with a biography and bibliography, this catalogue is the most exhaustive documentation of Höller's challenging work to date. . . . . [see book details]

  Essay by Germano Celant. Introduction by Miuccia Prada. Hardcover, 7.5 x 6 in. / 286 pgs / 220 color. Publication Date: 2/2/2002 List Price: US $60.00

  Charta/Fondazione Pitti Immagine Discovery Vanessa Beecroft: VB53 VB 53 provides documentation of Vanessa Beecroft's most recent performance at Pitti Immagine Uomo 66 in Florence's Horticultural Garden. 21 models of varying appearance and race were planted in a mass of earth in the tepidarium. All were nude except for a single accessory: Helmut Lang shoes that wrapped around their ankles, separating their bare legs from the bare, rough earth. According to Beecroft, The sole is reference to land art. Very dark and humid, like the rich foam of cultivated fields... The performance juxtaposes the purity of the female body, their nudity, with the dirty color of the soil and its material. Some models look like lillies, others like potatoes. Lilies and potatoes can also grow in filth.” The 50 images in this book illuminate Beecroft's signature issues: the body, beauty and identity. . . . . [see book details]

  Edited by Maria Luisa Frisa. Essay by Francesco Bonami. Paperback, 9.5 x 6.75 in. / 84 pgs / 40 color / 10 b&w. Publication Date: 2/15/2005 List Price: US $27.95

  Walther König, Köln Gelatin's ACB The Austrian artist collective formerly known as Gelatin (now Gelitin) is famed for its participatory works and events--a rollercoaster inside a gallery, a singing tunnel, a balcony on one of the twin towers of the World Trade Center, a sculpture made from visitor's frozen urine--presented at shows and biennials internationally since 1994. Exemplars of Nicolas Bourriaud's vision of art as "Relational Aesthetics," Gelitin brooks no humorlessness in its interventions, finding and provoking the "Gelitinesque" wherever it goes. Gelatin's ACB gathers documentation of the group's projects since its formation in 1993, and serves as both an overview of the group's oeuvre to date and a foretaste of projects to come. Photographs, sketches, models, artist statements and essays make this first comprehensive publication on the collective an uplifting Gelitin gesamtkunstwerk in itself. This volume comes with a PAL-compatible DVD, which can be played on international computers and European standard DVD players only. . . . . [see book details]

  Hardback, 10 x 12.75 in. / 326 pgs / 300 color / DVD (PAL). Publication Date: 7/1/2008 List Price: US $115.00

  Charta/Irish Museum of Modern Art All Hawaii Entrées: Lunar Reggae This crowd of artists, as exuberant as this collection's title, were recruited for a mini-survey of contemporary art based on the diversity of their approaches and practices, which the editors saw as representative. Their work in a variety of media from film and video to painting and installation is informed by everyday life, and addresses issues such as ecology, technology, popular culture and globalization. The pieces gathered here include a mix of key moments in conceptual art and newly commissioned works, sourced from the artists' studios and from international collections. Contributors include Liam Gillick, Carsten Höller, Douglas Gordon, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Jorge Pardo, Sarah Morris, Cerith Wyn Evans, Sarah Lucas, Anri Sala, Doug Aitken, Jim Lambie, Paola Pivi, Carles Congost and Eva Rothschild, and their work appears alongside pieces from the estates of Alighiero e Boetti and Bas Jan Ader. With texts from Liam Gillick and Kurt Vonnegut, among others. . . . . [see book details]

  Foreword by Enrique Juncosa. Edited by Philippe Parreno, Rachael Thomas. Text by Kurt Vonnegut, Cory Doctorow, Grant Morrison, Liam Gillick, Hans Pruijt, Philippe Parreno, Rachael Thomas. Clothbound, 9.5 x 11 in. / 224 pgs / 104 color/7 b&w. Publication Date: 2/1/2007 List Price: US $70.00

  Guggenheim Museum Theanyspacewhatever During the 1990s a number of artists claimed the exhibition as their medium. Working independently or in various collaborative constellations, they eschewed the individual object in favor of the exhibition environment as a dynamic arena, ever expanding its physical and temporal parameters. For these artists an exhibition can comprise a film, a novel, a shared meal, a social space, a performance or a journey. Their work engages directly with the vicissitudes of everyday life, offering subtle moments of transformation. This catalogue, which accompanies a major exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, is the first in the U.S. to examine the dynamic interchange among a core group of these artists--Angela Bulloch, Maurizio Cattelan, Liam Gillick, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Douglas Gordon, Carsten Höller, Pierre Huyghe, Jorge Pardo, Philippe Parreno and Rirkrit Tiravanija--a many-sided conversation that helped shape the cultural landscape of the 1990s and beyond. . . . . [see book details]

  Essays by Michael Archer, Jan Avgikos, Daniel Birnbaum, Ina Blom, Stefano Boeri, Francesco Bonami, Nicolas Bourriaud, Xavier Douroux, Patricia Falguieres, Heike Föll, Hal Foster, Massimiliano Gioni, Michael Govan, Dorothea von Hantelmann, Jens Hoffman, Chrissie Iles, Branden Joseph, Emily King, Christy Lange, Maria Lind, Tom Morton, Molly Nesbit, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Beatrix Ruf, Stephan Schmidt-Wulffen, Barbara Steiner, Rachael Thomas, Eric Troncy, Giorgio Verzotti, Thomas Wulffen, Olivier Zahm Hardback, 6.5 x 9.5 in. / 256 pgs / 85 color. Publication Date: 10/1/2008 List Price: US $49.95