In a process she describes as a quiet observational approach, British artist Jess Allen (born 1966) captures the human shadow—draped across rippling fabrics, angled across doorways or illuminated within window frames. Her oil on linen compositions thus encapsulate the notions of both absence and presence, as the subject exists both inside and outside the world of the painting. Allen believes that our shadows are reflections of our souls: always present with us, sometimes hidden, but revealed through our relationship with the light. Linen-bound with a hot foil-embossed cover, Shadow/Self is the first monograph on Allen's work, focusing on this celebrated series that explores memory, presence and the passage of time.

Throughout his life, artist Per Adolfsen (born 1964) has embarked upon solitary nature walks in his native Denmark and beyond, capturing the sublime topographies he traverses in his sketchbook. When he returns home, the artist transmutes his sketches into larger scaled colored pencil and graphite drawings on Hahnemühle paper. Although devoid of human figures, his landscape drawings double as self-portraits; Adolfsen recognizes that just as he is shaped by the natural world, he shapes it in turn. Through moonlit rock formations, wide open roads and desolate plains, Adolfsen's compositions evoke both passages from Thoreau and paintings by Caspar David Friedrich.
Walk . . . .go to book page >>

Gathering select works completed between 1990 and 2022, this volume showcases the octogenarian Senegalese ceramicist Seyni Awa Camara's (born 1939) totemic sculptures. Evoking subjects ranging from bestiaries to motor vehicles and maternity scenes, Camara's sculptural forms are divined from her dreams. After preparing her clay, sometimes adding ore or other natural mediums to the mixture, the artist carves the complex forms appearing in each work. Camara then fires the clay on a wooden pyre before immersing it in a liquid obtained from putrefied tree pods, lending the sculptures their color and robust, textured quality.
Alongside installation shots and artwork images, this . . . .go to book page >>