Preview our Fall 2023 catalog, featuring more than 500 new books on art, photography, design, architecture, film, music and visual culture.
CHARTA/IRISH MUSEUM OF MODERN ART
Carlos Garaicoa
Text by Okwui Enwezor, Sean Kissane, Enrique Juncosa, Sofía Hernandez.
Carlos Garaicoa (born 1967) addresses the politics and ideologies of his native Cuba through an examination of its architecture. After the 1959 Cuban revolution, many architectural projects and buildings were left unfinished or abandoned in the nation's cities. Adopting Havana as his laboratory, Garaicoa creates provocative visual commentaries on such themes as architecture's ability to alter the course of history, the failure of modernism as a catalyst for social change and the frustration and decay of twentieth-century utopias. Garaicoa makes his critiques through large installations using materials such as crystal, wax candles and rice-paper lamps: in "Bend City" (2007), the artist constructed a city entirely from cut paper, and "The Crown Jewels" (2009) consists of miniature replicas of real-life torture centers, prisons and intelligence networks, all cast in silver. This publication includes new and recent works, and demonstrates the breadth of Garaicoa's witty articulations of architecture and urbanism.
FROM THE BOOK
"The works of Garaicoa--and particularly their titles would point to an overt concern with the history of political systems and thought--Absolutism, Enlightenment, Socialism, Capitalism…Yet, his works are not mere theses on abstract political notions--rather they are concrete--in all the multiple senses of the word. In aligning politics and architecture, one could posit that as Garaicoa's architecture can be read through an emotional lens, similarly his political interests lie in the politics of consequences—psychological consequences which are a demonstration of political policy as it is lived and breathed. It is the transubstantiation of the political word to the body politic."
Sean Kissane, excerpted from Radix Malorum in Carlos Garaicoa.
FORMAT: Hbk, 9.25 x 11 in. / 288 pgs / 183 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $75.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $90 ISBN: 9788881587841 PUBLISHER: Charta/Irish Museum of Modern Art AVAILABLE: 9/30/2010 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: No longer our product AVAILABILITY: Not available
Published by Charta/Irish Museum of Modern Art. Text by Okwui Enwezor, Sean Kissane, Enrique Juncosa, Sofía Hernandez.
Carlos Garaicoa (born 1967) addresses the politics and ideologies of his native Cuba through an examination of its architecture. After the 1959 Cuban revolution, many architectural projects and buildings were left unfinished or abandoned in the nation's cities. Adopting Havana as his laboratory, Garaicoa creates provocative visual commentaries on such themes as architecture's ability to alter the course of history, the failure of modernism as a catalyst for social change and the frustration and decay of twentieth-century utopias. Garaicoa makes his critiques through large installations using materials such as crystal, wax candles and rice-paper lamps: in "Bend City" (2007), the artist constructed a city entirely from cut paper, and "The Crown Jewels" (2009) consists of miniature replicas of real-life torture centers, prisons and intelligence networks, all cast in silver. This publication includes new and recent works, and demonstrates the breadth of Garaicoa's witty articulations of architecture and urbanism.
