his book, There, is here and now. It is both concrete art, and Rohrschach test, flipbook and short story. In a way, the book tells the history of art of the last forty years. Way back then, we had books like Matisse’s Cutouts. This was a book in which paper became picture. In which flat cut-outs represented human forms, and thus referred to the three-dimensional.
Now, in There, we have pictures that are almost abstract, except they might be porno, pictures that look like graphic design, but are art, pictures that are black and then white. Haim Steinbach is a friend of Steel. We can tell this in the title and the graphics, and the fact that the book came to fruition for onestar press. If Haim recommends another artist, we are going to believe him. He knows how to choose cereal boxes, exercise balls, wigs, lava lamps, and Halloween masks with precision. He is a master in the discerning of beauty. And thus, his recommendation of this book is good enough for you and me. Buy it. It is sexy. There.
Cornelia Lauf (Rome)
y the elegant defacement of his own cover of Purple, Mark Borthwick simultaneously negates and reclaims a publication with which he is widely identifi ed. But Social documentaries amid this pist is neither an appropriation or a parody. It is, rather, a compilation of photography and text that serves as an introduction to a complex body of work that defi es easy description; perhaps urban pastoral might do. I prefer to think of Mark as a closet romantic who messes with form; wether it be the printed page, a garment, a sound, or an event. Primarily a person with a camera, a democratic, Warholian logic pervades Mark’s thinking. Something like; “If this girl is beautiful, then shouldn’t this one be?”, or, “If we admire a dress for its shape and lines, can’t we admire the sidewalk for the same reasons?”, etc. Mark also likes to give his subjects things to do-like hold this plant/pillow/ or entire rack of dresses. 
hatever your politics, we can probably agree that September 11, 2001, was one of those “before and after” moments for just about everybody. The world DID change. That’s the easy part, even if it’s hard to take. But Elein Fleiss, the esteemed Purple magazine co-founder, has chosen in her onestar press book to show us her rendition of the “during”, those moments when our minds struggled to absorb the enormity of it all. Elein has managed togive us a visual representation of consciousnessactually shifting by juxtaposing images of the world with images ofsomeone reading a newspaper, etc. That black date, the book’s title, does the rest, along with your memory. This book makes me think of the film Shoah (remember that forest?) or Frank O’Hara’s famous poem on the death of Billy Holiday. Fleiss’s instincts are exactlyright, and she found the poetry that persists in an unacceptable world. RD
ven though it is not a flip-book, Jon Kessler’s The Freckles on My Back lends itself to flipping. His reverse printed close-up photographs of his freckles are like stars spangling the night sky and, with a little imagination and some quick wrist and finger action, looking at the book is almost like travelling in space and time. Kessler, best known for his sophisticated kinetic works, creates an abstract, yet somehow intimate, surface out of his own body in his spot-on (no pun intended) artist’s book.
toryboard is the title of Elisabetta Benassi’s artist’s book for onestar press. I have a certain feeling when I meet artists of exceptional quality. There is something in their faces that moves me, like when I hear a perfectly tuned “A”. It’s like a weight settling. Doesn’t much matter what aspect of the artist we are talking about. How they eat, get drunk, write, draw, speak, make work. Betta’s one of those artists. Storyboard is the tale of the artist playing soccer with her alter ego, a football player remarkably similar to Pier Paolo Pasolini. Interspersed in the picture flipbook are scenes from films by the famous Italian comedian, Toto. They serve to create additional levels of dialogue, making for a story about a play about reality and fiction, about time and narration. Betta’s own storyboard is only partially written. Her tryst is with the Italianness of her past. With her male femaleness and her female maleness. With the films of her beloved Pier Paolo Pasolini, and the designed machines of her country, those fire-red superbly made cars and motorcycles, those automobile racing ramps, all called “she” in Italian. Betta is as beautiful as a Botticelli; hard and diaphanous at the same time. Her works, Storyboard included, have a particularly fascinating quality. They are able to synthesize the past, even quoting it deliberately, without resorting to nostalgia or imitation. They are artificial but completely natural. Her artworks are so realistic they seem like tools or machines, and avoid ever becoming metaphor. Yet, they remain poetic devices. Betta works with design, fashion, style and popular culture, but always in the name of art. Betta is a goal. Present tense poet, philosopher and practitioner, swiftly kicking straight into the net.
