ARTIST MONOGRAPHS

Olaf Nicolai

Museum Exhibition Catalogues, Monographs, Artist's Projects, Curatorial Writings and Essays


  

PREVIOUSLY ANNOUNCED

Olaf Nicolai: A Light Vapour Emanating from Bound Matter as Spirits Running, Along

SPECTOR BOOKS
Text by Olaf Nicolai, Stefanie Patruno, Jan Wenzel.

The first survey of Nicolai's artists’ books

Pbk, 9 x 13 in. / 144 pgs. | 1/21/2025 | Awaiting stock
$40.00


       

ACTIVE BACKLIST

Olaf Nicolai: Mirador

MODERNE KUNST NüRNBERG
Edited by Markus Landert. Text by Dorothee Messmer.

Pbk, 14 x 10 in. / 80 pgs / illustrated throughout. | 8/31/2011 | In stock
$45.00


Olaf Nicolai & Heidi Specker: Le Pigment de la Lumière

SPECTOR BOOKS

Pbk, 8 x 10.75 in. / 48 pgs / 35 color. | 7/1/2015 | In stock
$40.00


Olaf Nicolai: Escalier du Chant

SPECTOR BOOKS

Pbk, 7 x 9.75 in. / 206 pgs / illustrated throughout. | 1/1/2012 | In stock
$100.00


Olaf Nicolai: Silent Partners

SPECTOR BOOKS
By Olaf Nicolai. Text by Marian Kaiser, Eva Wilson.

Pbk, 8.25 x 11.75 in. / 94 pgs / illustrated throughout. | 1/1/2016 | In stock
$32.00


  

OUT OF PRINT LISTING

Olaf Nicolai

HATJE CANTZ
Artwork by Olaf Nicolai. Edited by Raimar Stange, Barbara Steiner. Contributions by Charles Esche. Text by Magnus Haglund.

Paperback, 10 x 11 in. / 160 pgs / 70 color | 7/2/2003 | Not available
$45.00


Olaf Nicolai: A Light Vapour Emanating from Bound Matter as Spirits Running, AlongOlaf Nicolai: A Light Vapour Emanating from Bound Matter as Spirits Running, Along

Publications 1990–2020

Published by Spector Books.
Text by Olaf Nicolai, Stefanie Patruno, Jan Wenzel.

This publication highlights German conceptualist Olaf Nicolai's (born 1962) experiments with artists’ books, their presentation in galleries, his collaborations with authors, designers and publishers, and modes of distribution.



PUBLISHER
Spector Books

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 9 x 13 in. / 144 pgs.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date
Forthcoming

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: SPRING 2021 p. 150   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9783959054188 FLAT40
List Price: $40.00 CDN $56.00

AVAILABILITY
Awaiting stock

STATUS: Forthcoming | 1/21/2025

This title is not yet published in the U.S. To pre-order or receive notice when the book is available, please email orders @ artbook.com

Olaf Nicolai: Silent PartnersOlaf Nicolai: Silent Partners

The Bauhaus Files

Published by Spector Books.
By Olaf Nicolai. Text by Marian Kaiser, Eva Wilson.

What do books that were never written tell us about their authors, about the book-lives they never lived? The Bauhaus book series was started in 1925 as an ambitious project and grand marketing campaign. The big issues and questions of modernism were to be dealt with by internationally renowed authors — including one female author — in more than fifty publications. In the end, only fourteen of them were published. Silent Partners is made up of three sequences dedicated to the never-published books. In each of the scenes, one unwritten Bauhaus book has a conversation with an object or an idea from within the book.

PUBLISHER
Spector Books

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 8.25 x 11.75 in. / 94 pgs / illustrated throughout.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date
Active

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: Publisher Backlist

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9783959051095 TRADE
List Price: $32.00 CDN $42.50

AVAILABILITY
In stock

in stock  $32.00


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Olaf Nicolai & Heidi Specker: Le Pigment de la LumièreOlaf Nicolai & Heidi Specker: Le Pigment de la Lumière

Published by Spector Books.

Olaf Nicolai developed the work Le pigment de la lumière for the reconstructed Master’s Houses in Dessau. It involved coating the walls with marble dust with varying degrees of granulation to create a geometrical pattern, thus producing a subtle relief that responds to the changing light conditions. In this work, Nicolai continues to pursue his artistic interest in grappling with the formal concept of camouflage, since, to begin with, the wall surfaces are almost invisible to the viewer. Heidi Specker gives Le pigment de la lumière a heightened sense of presence in her photography. Her pictures direct the gaze of the viewer to the contouring and the interplay of surface and space—a reflective phenomenon that is a calculated part of Nicolai’s wall surfaces. In Nicolai and Specker’s joint publication, an aesthetic intervention in the reconstructed space is further extrapolated using the medium of photography presented in book form.

PUBLISHER
Spector Books

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 8 x 10.75 in. / 48 pgs / 35 color.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date
Active

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: Publisher Backlist

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9783944669588 TRADE
List Price: $40.00 CDN $54.00

AVAILABILITY
In stock

in stock  $40.00


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Olaf Nicolai: Escalier du ChantOlaf Nicolai: Escalier du Chant

Published by Spector Books.

How can songs reflect political events? How does a song become a political song? The artist Olaf Nicolai invited eleven international composers to write songs that reference political events which were of current relevance to them. Without prior announcement, a total of 58 songs were performed as a-cappella pieces on twelve Sundays in 2011 on the central staircase of the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich. Visitors to the museum found themselves as actors in a staged performance for brief instances of time. The publication Escalier du Chant presents excerpts from the songs and commentaries by the composers in the form of 58 music sheets; the accompanying booklet contains various photographs of the performances. Includes songs by Tony Conrad, Georg Friedrich Haas, Georg Katzer, Liza Lim, Samir Odeh-Tamimi, Enno Poppe with Marcel Beyer, Rolf Riehm, James Saunders, Elliott Sharp, Mika Vainio, Jennifer Walshe.

PUBLISHER
Spector Books

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 7 x 9.75 in. / 206 pgs / illustrated throughout.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date
Active

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: Publisher Backlist

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9783940064653 TRADE
List Price: $100.00 CDN $132.50

AVAILABILITY
In stock

in stock  $100.00


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Olaf Nicolai: MiradorOlaf Nicolai: Mirador

Published by Moderne Kunst Nürnberg.
Edited by Markus Landert. Text by Dorothee Messmer.

This publication focuses on recent works by German artist Olaf Nicolai (born 1962), including his 2009 work "Mirador." Inspired by the eponymous observation point in Daniel Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe, Nicolai traveled to the South Pacific to take a single photograph, of which only one copy was made, thus undoing assumptions of the photograph as a reproducible object.

PUBLISHER
Moderne Kunst Nürnberg

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 14 x 10 in. / 80 pgs / illustrated throughout.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date
Active

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: FALL 2010 p. 148   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9783869840338 TRADE
List Price: $45.00 CDN $60.00

AVAILABILITY
In stock

in stock  $45.00


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Olaf NicolaiOlaf Nicolai

Published by Hatje Cantz.
Artwork by Olaf Nicolai. Edited by Raimar Stange, Barbara Steiner. Contributions by Charles Esche. Text by Magnus Haglund.

Olaf Nicolai questions the processes of perception in order to elicit a different kind of reception. "Questions of form, moods, attitudes and style are not just vain play with surfaces. They are questions of [the] organizational forms of activities," he explains. In his works, Nicolai displays attitudes and styles, combining and collecting them. He integrates classical artistic techniques and the act of collecting; he secures evidence and constructs archives as the activities of his artistic production. His surprising, often overwhelming installations combine current questions of the natural sciences and the liberal arts with conceptional works that refer to biology, architecture, aesthetics, iconography, history, and the general processes of civilization and urban life. Focused on the construction and exploration of new aesthetic contexts, Nicolai's work often reflects the difference between nature and art, or naturalness and artificiality. This first big monograph is published on the occasion of Nicolai's receipt of the Kunstpreis from the city of Wolfsburg.

PUBLISHER
Hatje Cantz

BOOK FORMAT
Paperback, 10 x 11 in. / 160 pgs / 70 color

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date
Out of print

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: SPRING 2003

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9783775712736 TRADE
List Price: $45.00 CDN $55.00

AVAILABILITY
Not available

STATUS: Out of print | 4/24/2004

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