Published May 22, 2009 by aanews
Published by aanews
Three Star Books presents
Holy Silence by Tobias Rehberger
Cannaregio 3792 (Calle Priuli)
30121 Venezia
Mélanie Scarciglia, Publisher
Cornelia Lauf, Editor
Christophe Boutin, Production
“Holy Silence” is on view from 4 to 7 June 2009, 24h/24h
Published by aanews
OBJECT
Concept and Design: Haim Steinbach
Published Spring 2009
Format: 27 x 29.5 x 4 cm. - 10.6 x 11.6 x 1.6 inches.
64 pages, offset on board, with hole punch
Printed slipcase
First edition of 800 copies
Photography and Production: Christophe Boutin
Editor: Cornelia Lauf
Publisher: Mélanie Scarciglia
We hereby announce «OBJECT,» by Haim Steinbach, the latest publication
by Three Star Books. It is the seventh in our series of limited book editions.
«OBJECT» is a board book that almost forms a sandwich–with a hole punched
in the middle. Each page reproduces one object selected by Steinbach, and
photographed head-on, as a portrait. The sixty-one images in this two-kilogram
book constitute one of the most moving and autobiographical accounts of the
personal journey of Steinbach. A picture book, a dictionary, a self-portrait, and a
lesson in art-making.
Published by aanews
From The ONESTAR EGOMANIA TOUR special issue of Afterart News #5
e quelqu’un qui se prenait trop au sérieux, on disait autrefois qu’il avait la grosse tête. Quant à celui qui ne s’intéressait qu’à lui, on le traitait de nombriliste. Ces images parlantes se comprennent encore mais l’on entend souvent dire qu’untel a un égo surdimensionné. Comme on ne connaît pas la taille d’un égo bien proportionné, cette dernière expression ne produit aucune image et les choses sont moins faciles. Je ne sais pas quels sont les symptômes de l’égomania mais j’imagine que ceux qui en sont atteints ont des grosses têtes et doivent se tordre pour se regarder le nombril. Je me souviens que Fluxus, notamment dans les definitions de Maciunas, mettait en avant l’absence d’égo. George Brecht, par exemple, était convaincu de son absence d’égo parce qu’il ne se posait jamais la question de savoir si ce qu’il faisait était de l’art. On peut croire à son innocence et quand même se demander si jamais ne lui est venu un soupçon lorsqu’il voyait ses travaux exposés dans des galeries ou dans des musées. Cette absence d’égo brillait comme un idéal au soleil de Fluxus et parmi les raisons invoquées pour exclure rapidement Beuys des manifestations de l’internationale Fluxus, il y avait notamment la tache infâmante de l’égo (et aussi le fait que ses actions étaient trop élaborées et chargées de signification).
Ceci nous amène à évoquer l’égo des artistes dans l’art contemporain et puisque l’on a évoqué Beuys, on ne peut pas ne pas convoquer l’autre grande figure, parfois jugée complémentaire, celle de Warhol. Ce dernier n’a aujourd’hui plus d’adversaires sérieux et sert de point de comparaison à peu près à toutes les attitudes artistiques. Parmi les nombreuses ironies du sort le concernant, celui qui, trop heureux de saccager la figure de l’artiste, avouait que les thèmes de ses séries (Disasters, Flowers, Cows) lui avaient été soufflés par ses amis et mentors (Geldzhaler, Karp) voit régulièrement ses oeuvres exposées sur des bases iconographiques. Son ultime idée de génie, les Mao, offraient l’heureuse synthèse du culte de la personnalité en politique et celle de l’impersonnalité en art, pour le plus grand triomphe de l’artiste.
Read entire article
Published by aanews
From The ONESTAR EGOMANIA TOUR special issue of Afterart News #5
n art celebrity for nearly 30 years, Julian Schnabel the painter has ceased to matter-but for those watching his appearance on CBS’s ’60 Minutes’ 12/2/08 with the art-hating Morley Safer (You Tube it) some degree of sympathy may be extended in the direction of this crucial individual. The artist’s revulsion following Safer’s moment of ‘gotcha’ journalism suggests a similar moment in cinema when the spell of a supernatural being is momentarily deflected by a wily, professorial older man. Schnabel’s emergence took place when American art education, real estate, gallery business practices, and the necessity for a novel product aligned in a ‘perfect storm’, wrenching painting away from post-minimalism’s second generation to art that in the approximate words of Joseph Maschek forgot history and began to resemble previous art-only bigger. Unlike David Salle or Francesco Clemente, who both early in their careers made conceptually based photo and text works, Schnabel had stayed loyal to the easel. I recall that his mid-70’s ‘Dog’ paintings looked like a crude pastiche of styles ranging from late Phillip Guston to the contrarian ‘bad’ painting of Neil Jenney. Schnabel’s visual appetite was mighty, consuming fellow Texan Michael Tracy, Joseph Beuys, Antoni Tapies, and most enduringly, Cy Twombly. The canvas and wall platforms supporting his ‘plate’ paintings of the early 80’s still evoke a heady time of the 80’s art boom where seemingly overnight, one kind of art thinking retreated to lay dormant for another decade. Schnabel’s plate paintings played on a carnival imagining of antiquity, not unlike the cheesy ‘sword and sandal’ Hercules movies filmed in the dusty back lots of Rome, that were distributed across America at the time of Schnabel’s (and my) youth. A Jewish Brooklynite transplanted to exotic, Christian Texas, one wonders how the artist could have avoided these endlessly televised spectacles with their flimsy sets and tumbling squads of centurions.
Read entire article
Published by aanews
ith this new issue of afterart news we are happy to present portraits of all the artists/authors who, since the year 2000 have produced a project for onestar press (Check www.onestarpress.com for an updated list). Most of the portraits were sent to us by the artists themselves. We would also like to thank all the photographers who helped the artists provide their images. To accompany this gallery of portraits we asked Philippe Buschinger, Stefano Chiodi, Richard Dailey, Claire Staebler, Patrick Javault, Tim Maul, Cornelia Lauf, and Benedikt Ledebur to write essays that use the title: ONESTAR EGOMANIA TOUR as the starting point of their reflection. onestar press would like to thank all of them for their continuing support.
Christophe Boutin & Mélanie Scarciglia.
Published May 21, 2009 by aanews
Anna Jermolaewa
am Sonntag, 24. Mai 2009 um 11 Uhr
Einführung
Dr. Andrea Jahn, Kuratorin
Künstlergespräch mit Anna Jermolaewa
am Kunstfreitag, 10. Juli um 20.30 Uhr
Moderation: Dr. Andrea Jahn, Kuratorin
Ausstellung vom 24. Mai bis 12. Juli 2009
Dienstag bis Freitag 14 bis 17 Uhr
Samstag, Sonn- und Feiertage
11 bis 17 Uhr
Published May 5, 2009 by aanews
obert Barry’s exhibition “RB 62-08” was stunning, the finest U.S. installation of his work. Two recent word pieces and two abstract paintings from the early ’60s—one of them paired with a new painting—plus one word work recreated in 2009 from a 1969 original and a single seminal photo-and-text piece from the same year, provided intriguing examples of the artist’s thinking. Too late for Pop, Barry ran instead with the puritanical imperatives of the minimalists, while maintaining a utopian optimism in the mass media’s transformative dissemination of information. Specifically, he used the promotional systems and materials of the gallery system to distribute ephemeral, intellectually driven art whose ‘masterpieces’ took the form of booklets, postcards, and other cost effective production strategies such as the Xerox machine. Like the other “idea” or Conceptual artists, Barry functioned as a one-person ad agency, stylistically distinguishing his project from those of his philosophizing art-barstool rivals whose medium was also words in English by choosing a serene, modern typeface that easily moved from page to wall.
The earliest work shown, an untitled painting of 1962, suggests a slightly skewed checkerboard, or a tradesman’s banner heralding the arrival of party-crashing logicians like Barry. Across the room, Inert Gas Series: Neon (1969) documents, with crime-scene-report economy, the release of a small amount of neon gas into the rugged landscape around L.A. Comprised of two black-and-white 8-by-10 photographs and a typewritten text, this modest work has grown to classic stature among art of that crammed decade. In another work conceived the same year, Barry pursued the “there and not there” with an even less photogenic—in fact, invisible—transaction: the “telepathic” transmission, as each wall-painted phrase says, of “a secret desire,” “a volitional state of mind,” “a particular emotion,” and so on. These words neither hector nor instruct, but rather establish mood in pleasant shades of green, red, yellow, blue and lilac.
Unlike Ruscha’s word works from the same period, Barry’s do not mimic signage or appear plucked from a cartoon strip’s balloon—instead, they work for a living. In Red Cross (2008), 12 words cast in holiday-red acrylic formed a square frame on the floor at the center of the gallery’s main room. They feel instructional—we step around “remind,” careful not to displace “changing.” Word List (2008) is just that, eight painted words on a wall, alternating between upright and inverted. The colors are again decorous: “almost” is rendered in a middle-range orange while “recognize,” upside-down in white, almost melts away.
Major attention to Barry, and to other conceptualists, lay dormant until the excesses of the 80’s had run their course. Perhaps it is this replay of art and real world economics when reintroduced, Barry’s art finds its value elevated in every way, and its influence apparent. A direct line can be drawn between Barry’s 1981 show of projections at Leo Castelli Gallery (in collaboration with Carole Gallagher) and the big words sliding down the screen behind the Talking Heads in Jonathan Demme’s 1984 concert film Stop Making Sense. Precision is necessary in writing about art that is, basically, writing; in relation to Barry, a sub-definition of the word “sublime” leaps off the dictionary page: “to pass directly from the solid to the vapor state, and condense back to solid form.”
Click here to check Robert Barry at onestar press (a book and a multiple).
