Anton Maurer’s Endeavour is a series visualising the impacts of capitalism and colonisation on Aotearoa, New Zealand. Made from 2012–2017 the works challenge viewers to question their perception of this land and the narratives most commonly associated with it.
Edition of 100
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Michel Butor’s Description of San Marco (1963) is an unusual book; an unorthodox intermingling of overheard dialogue from the iconic Venetian square in question, thick descriptions of persons and buildings, along with sober historical information. In the original, each genre of information is assigned a distinct typography of its own, hence interacting like voices in a play.
Six decades later, the artist Giovanna Silva stumbled upon an English translation of the French essayist’s queer text in an archive at the New York Public Library. Returning to Venice, she cast her eye to the square and its surrounds, an iconic space at once populated by signs of contemporary life, but also astonishingly unchanged.
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Bodybuilders is a photographic project by London and Milan based photographer and DJ, Alien that investigates themes of identity, extravaganza and new means of self-expression by documenting 30 of the most intriguing club performers in the UK.
Sitting at a crossroads between visual and performing arts, gender studies, queer activism and positive affirmation, Bodybuilders shows how bodies can be built, distorted and transformed against the binary of systematic male domination.
Bodybuilders includes introductory texts by co-author of The Xenofeminist Manifesto, Helen Hester and Inferno London’s founder, Lewis G. Burton.
First edition of 600
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Handful of Earth is an ongoing visual exploration of man’s connection to his living environment and day-to-day life in mountain areas.
„Even as a child, I was fascinated with the mysterious atmosphere of mountain scenery. In 2014 I started to volunteer for a local NGO, and my instinctive drive to explore led me back to them. I kept the pictures taken during my mountain hikes for about two years. Then the puzzle behind the project started to take shape. To me, a place can have a certain sound of its own, which is why I tried to put into pictures emotions generated by music. Handful of Earth is both the first part of this project and the title of an album combining traditional and contemporary music. Its inspiration comes from genres like ambient, electroacoustic and experimental music.”
– Andrei Becheru
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I couldn’t stop thinking that people initially started to use names for convenience only but they morphed into something more significant. A destiny can be attached to a name: some parents carefully check the meaning of a name and wish their child will live up to that. But a name can’t define a person life as well as you will never know if a person grew up liking its own name, the meaning or the set of expectations that comes with that specific name. Then which name becomes the perfect name for someone or something?
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This book is an anomalous and layered object. It is split into chapters, following the way the Matrice exhibition was developed and completed over many months of work. Some key phases in the construction of the project in fact took place in the period prior to its opening, in a form that straddles the private dimension of an artist’s work and the public dimension of the exhibition. As also discussed in the critical text, Jacopo moved his studio to the spaces of the Fondazione Carispezia in the months preceding its opening. Here, within a triangular, uterine structure, the physical ‘matrix’ of the exhibition to be precise, he produced most of the works that would then be exhibited. And indeed many things took place inside it. The catalogue thus attempts to account for all of this. The colour photographs were taken by photographer Andrea Rossetti to document the two moments in which the project came into being. The first is made up of the so-called ‘invisible exhibition’: in order to understand the genesis of Matrice, we in fact need to understand how the exhibition is the final result of the ‘real’ exhibition that no one but the artist and very few others had the pleasure of seeing. All the works in this closed space, built in the very heart of the Foundation space, were in fact displayed on the walls, yet destined never to be seen by any visitor and then to be brutally dismembered. As the photos show, the works displayed are covered with a series of sheets to prevent them from being seen during Jacopo’s performance a few days prior to the opening. Only the photographs installed horizontally above the sculptures are partially visible. In the centre of the room, on the other hand, we can still see the tools used in the creation of the works, and the musical instruments that would later be played during the performance. The second moment taken by Rossetti consists of the actual Matrice exhibition itself, which the public could then view during its opening months. Andrea is one of the world’s leading exponents of that fine art which is the documentation of artworks and especially of contemporary art exhibitions. It is indeed an approach that requires great sensitivity and critical outlook. It is a translation process in which a – fruitful – betrayal of the material to be translated is and always will be necessary. A loving and respectful betrayal which was indeed requested by Benassi when he brought Rossetti on board for this task. The two sections of the catalogue must therefore be seen as a true collaboration between the two, in the wake of the many already developed by Jacopo with other artists in the fields of performance and sound research. The black-and-white photographs in the book were instead all taken by Jacopo Benassi or devised, prepared and coordinated by him. They recount the most performative and moving moments of the exhibition and its making, and are very much integrated with Andrea Rossetti’s work, adopting the same brutality with which Jacopo intervened in the Foundation exhibition space.
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When Eye Touches Cloud is the first monograph dedicated to the manifold oeuvre of Romanian artist Constantin Flondor (born 1936, in Czernowitz), the leading protagonist of the art groups 111, Sigma and Prolog. This richly illustrated publication takes a closer look on the influential body of work he had produced in painting, kinetic & Op art, land art, action, experimental film & photography from the 1960s until today. It surveys the various steps of his practice: from the lyricism of the first pictorial constructs to the optical and kinetic art of the Group 111, from the study of form and land art characteristic of the Sigma Group, defined as the effort to connect within a single equation visual research and experiment, to the Prolog Group’s spirit of communion and conviviality.
The book offers a comprehensive overview of the principles that shape Constantin Flondor’s art, of reflecting and theorising starting from the inventory of terms, themes, and concepts that have guided him as an artist over seventy years of uninterrupted work and of restoring them to the international context of art through the contributions of invited authors, Dieter Roelstraete & Abigail Winograd, Rainer Fuchs, and Katarzyna Cytlak. Besides the commissioned essays, the book includes a selection from the artist writings and several archival materials which enlarge our view on artist’s singular mode of thinking.
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P+4 Publications is an independent publishing programme dedicated to the promotion of Romanian contemporary art, photography and architecture, exploring the book medium as a point of encounter between theoretical research, graphic design experiment and artists’ ideas and subjects present in their practice. Presently, the programme brings together the Artist Book Series and the Architecture Book Series, supported between 2013–2021 by the PEPLUSPATRU Association, and Parkour and Exhibition-Dossier series, developed by the Institute of the Present since 2017. Starting from 2021, P+4 Publications is coordinated by the Institute of the Present.
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Despite the state of the world, the sunrise, the smells, nature, and youth.
Everything was beautiful at the moment.
These photographs were taken for an advertisement for the artist’s brand ATELIER FLATMOON (https://www.atelierflatmoon.com/).
Photography by Hideaki Ota
@hid_ota
Edition of 30, numbered
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Printed in the edition of 200, Atom is an exploration of desire, beauty, loneliness, and introspection. It is also a reflection of our shifting understanding of the body and spaces we’ve inhabited in the last two turbulent years, and a project firmly rooted in the transformative power of the female gaze.
Atom captures a range of leather pieces by Fleet Ilya as tools of self-discovery, intimate connection, and collaborative creativity. The book, edited by Fleet Ilya co-founder Resha Sharma, comprises portraits of five heroines within their private spaces, still lives, immersive nature shots by Bazhenova-Yamasaki, and poetic text by Beata Duvaker.
The book is a result of almost a decade-long collaboration between Bazhenova-Yamasaki and Fleet Ilya. It combines the plurality of female perspectives and voices from the collaborators and the heroines depicted in its pages – a testament to that underrepresented point of view when it comes to photography, sexuality, and leatherwork.
Atom is a book of erotic photography that reinvents erotic photography, strips it to viscerally honest corporeality, deep-rooted intimacy, and irresistible beauty of the small details, be it a flower or a leather strap. It offers a sensory journey through photography and writing – alongside the pleasure of an exquisite object to hold or have at home.
Edition of 200, numbered.
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‘Panorama’ is a collection of photographs of different landscapes in Tokyo captured between 2019-2020 using a slit camera that Haruyuki Shirai made himself.
‘Panorama’ is a combination of ‘pan’, meaning ‘all’, and ‘horama’, from the Greek word for ‘view’, hence the meaning ‘full view’. Haruyuki Shirai chose this word as the title of his book – a collection of photographs which capture ‘views of everything’.
The dimension of time is introduced, and the flow of time is projected horizontally, becoming a landscape-like scene. Upon a timeline, these photographs are the ‘views of everything’.
Text: Kinichi Obinata
Art Direction: Taro Kambe
Design: Noa Watanabe
Translation: Catherine Lealand
Edition of 500, numbered
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