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S.M.A.K.
Ed Templeton: The Cemetery of Reason
Edited by Thomas Caron. Text by Jean-François Chévrier, Carlo McCormick, Philippe van Cauteren, Arty Nelson, Thomas Caron.
Californian artist Ed Templeton (born 1972) delivers up his diagnosis of the contemporary human condition in a whirlwind of present-tense imagery, filtered through photographs, paintings and drawings. Over the past decade and a half, Templeton has built an oeuvre that closely tracks his day-to-day reality, recording life in the Southern Californian suburbs, his flawed family background, his life as a professional skateboarder, his milieu, the relationship between the artist and his muse (his wife Deanna) and much else. Templeton has also drawn deeply on artists such as Egon Schiele, Balthus, David Hockney, Larry Clark and Nan Goldin; as with their work, what begins as a very personal chronicle ultimately opens out onto grander horizons--in Templeton's case, a broad meditation on the chaos and the joy of being human. The Cemetery of Reason is the first large monographic museum publication devoted to Templeton's work. Presented as a mid-career retrospective accompanying a spring 2010 exhibition at the S.M.A.K. (Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst) in Ghent, Belgium, it combines and juxtaposes works in various media from the past 15 years with new works and series, all reproduced in 260 color images, thus providing the most comprehensive overview of Templeton's work available. Born in 1972 and raised in the Orange County suburb of Los Angeles, Ed Templeton is a professional skateboarder, co-editor of the arts magazine ANP Quarterly, photographer and artist. His work was featured in the hugely successful traveling show Beautiful Losers.
"Ed Templeton, the artist, initially prompted by his life as a professional skateboarder, has fully given himself over for the better part of the last two decades to the task of documenting his experiences. Over the course of that same period, the kid and skate culture he was capturing and the particulars of said sub-culture moved toward a more prominent and centralized position within not just America but many countries, thus shifting Templeton himself in a very right place/right time situation. But along with this larger good fortune came the equally important fact that the work itself--the photos, paintings, and drawings--exudes a certain and rare equality about it as if fashioned from the hand of a peer or a kindred soul. Templeton's imagery is tender yet brutal, sometimes tragic and even more often humorous. In the eyes of his subjects, we see that he has been granted a certain permission to convey their stories, more than likely owning a great deal to the fact that he was going to be in the room regardless of whether or not he had a camera in his hand…and it was this epiphany that launched Templeton; so compelled by the urge to capture the world that was swirling all around him, he set about getting it down."
Arty Nelson, excerpted from The Inside Looking Out While The Outside Looks Back In in The Cemetery of Reason.
FORMAT: Pbk, 9 x 11.75 in. / 160 pgs / illustrated throughout. LIST PRICE: U.S. $39.95 LIST PRICE: CANADA $50 ISBN: 9789075679342 PUBLISHER: S.M.A.K. AVAILABLE: 8/31/2010 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of print AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: NA LA ASIA ME
Published by S.M.A.K.. Edited by Thomas Caron. Text by Jean-François Chévrier, Carlo McCormick, Philippe van Cauteren, Arty Nelson, Thomas Caron.
Californian artist Ed Templeton (born 1972) delivers up his diagnosis of the contemporary human condition in a whirlwind of present-tense imagery, filtered through photographs, paintings and drawings. Over the past decade and a half, Templeton has built an oeuvre that closely tracks his day-to-day reality, recording life in the Southern Californian suburbs, his flawed family background, his life as a professional skateboarder, his milieu, the relationship between the artist and his muse (his wife Deanna) and much else. Templeton has also drawn deeply on artists such as Egon Schiele, Balthus, David Hockney, Larry Clark and Nan Goldin; as with their work, what begins as a very personal chronicle ultimately opens out onto grander horizons--in Templeton's case, a broad meditation on the chaos and the joy of being human. The Cemetery of Reason is the first large monographic museum publication devoted to Templeton's work. Presented as a mid-career retrospective accompanying a spring 2010 exhibition at the S.M.A.K. (Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst) in Ghent, Belgium, it combines and juxtaposes works in various media from the past 15 years with new works and series, all reproduced in 260 color images, thus providing the most comprehensive overview of Templeton's work available.
Born in 1972 and raised in the Orange County suburb of Los Angeles, Ed Templeton is a professional skateboarder, co-editor of the arts magazine ANP Quarterly, photographer and artist. His work was featured in the hugely successful traveling show Beautiful Losers.
