Original sketches for “Vrach”, 2019. Mixed techniques on print outs, 29.7 x 21 cm each.

Book launch:

Renaud Regnery | Vrach

You are cordially invited to join us for the launch of Renaud Regnery publication Vrach,
 published by Motto Books in collaboration with Klemm’s gallery.

Friday, 29 October 2021, from 7 to 9pm

Motto Berlin
Skalitzer Str. 68, im Hinterhof

10997 Berlin

Vrach is Renaud Regnery’s collection of all the sketches made for the painting of the same name: Vrach, 2019, plaster, acrylic paint and alkyd lacquer on wallpaper on canvas, 200 x 135 cm. The painting is photographed at various stages of its completion and these printed images are used as the basis for further Studies. The artist reuses the loose sheets he finds in his studio: fragments of theoretical texts printed for the preparation of exhibitions, essays on the work by other artists, extracts of bank statements, failed copy of car documents etc.

Vrach is the first book of a wider collection based on the same concept.

Published by Motto Books
Edition of 150 / Order your copy here
Special Edition / Order here

72 frames from Gianfranco Baruchello Filming Marcel Duchamp (1964). A short portrait of Duchamp smoking a cigar.

2019
Flipbook
Edition of 200

Order Amuser Duchamp
Order The Crossing
Order Retard

Photo credit: Anna Azzali. Courtesy of Mousse Publishing.

Book launch:

The Artist’s Novel: The Novel as a Medium in the Visual Arts

David Maroto

In conversation with Krist Gruijthuijsen

Wednesday, 27 October 2021, 8pm

Motto Berlin
Skalitzer Str. 68, im Hinterhof
10997 Berlin

Publication in two volumes:

Part 1. A New Medium (theoretical essay)

Part 2. The Fantasy of the Novel (novel)

Why do artists write novels? What does the artist’s novel do to the visual arts? How should such a novel be experienced? In recent years, there has been a proliferation of visual artists who create novels as part of their wider art projects. They do so in order to address artistic issues by means of novelistic devices, favoring a sort of art predicated on process and subjectivity, introducing notions such as fiction, narrative, and imagination. In this sense, it is possible to speak of a new medium in the visual arts; yet, very little is known about it.

Join us for an evening of discussion during the launch of David Maroto’s The Artist’s Novel: The Novel as a Medium in the Visual Arts (Mousse Publishing, 2020). This two-volume book is the first to explore in depth the subject of the artist’s novel. Part 1: A New Medium aims to critically elucidate the pressing questions posed by the emergence of a new artistic medium with a theoretical approach to a number of key case studies.

Part 2: The Fantasy of the Novel is a research project in the form of a novel, which examines the process of creation of an artist’s novel. The protagonist is in the position of a detective who tries to understand the conditions under which an artist decides to write, and how such a thing is possible within an artistic setting.

Curator and art critic Krist Gruijthuijsen will accompany David in the discussion in order to examine the different ways contemporary artists have employed the artist’s novel, and its impact on the curatorial and institutional context in which it appears and with which it interacts.

Bios

David Maroto is a Spanish visual artist based in the Netherlands and a PhD from the Edinburgh College of Art, with an extensive international artistic practice. In 2011, he spent time at a residency in ISCP New York, where he met curator Joanna Zielińska and began a collaboration called The Book Lovers, a research project based on the creation of a collection and bibliography of artists’ novels with the continuous support of M HKA (Antwerp). This collaboration has enabled them to engage with a host of international institutions. David has published numerous articles and edited various publications, including Artist Novels (Sternberg Press, 2015); Tamam Shud (Sternberg Press, 2018); and Obieg Magazine no. 8, ‘Art & Literature: A Mongrel’s Guide‘ (2018).

Krist Gruijthuijsen is a curator, art critic, and director of KW Institute for Contemporary Art. He was artistic director of the Grazer Kunstverein in Graz in 2012–16 and has been course director of the MA fine arts department at the Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam since 2011. He is one of the co-founding directors of Kunstverein in Amsterdam and has organised numerous exhibitions and projects over the past decade, including Manifesta 7 (Trentino-South Tyrol,IT), Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center (Istanbul), Artists Space (New York), Swiss Institute (New York), Galeria Vermelho (São Paulo), Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven), Arnolfini (Bristol, UK), Project Arts Centre (Dublin), Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (Salt Lake City, US), and Institute of Modern Art (Brisbane). Gruijthuijsen has produced, edited, and published extensively with JRP|Ringier Sternberg Press, Mousse Publishing, Printed Matter, Walther König, and Kunstverein Publishing, among which The Encyclopaedia of Fictional Artists (JRP|Ringier, 2010).

This project is possible thanks to the generous support of the Mondriaan Fund.

Friday 22nd October

From 6pm @ Motto Berlin

MISTAKE or Miracle?

a collaborative project between artist Jana Nowack and writer Dayna Grosz.

Order the book here

MISTAKE or Miracle? is a collaborative project between artist Jana Nowack and writer Dayna Grosz. The images and lyrics explore something of the beyond – beyond the concrete, beyond the material, beyond thought and beyond this planet. While the spark of this work was ignited off the blank canvas of a snow-filled Scandinavian landscape, it very slowly and very quietly matured into, well, what can we say? something very mysterious within the void of an infinite nothingness. To be honest, we stopped trying to make sense of it all as soon as we realized we were migrating through the fragility of this very uncertain century. The rest, as always, is up for interpretation.

Dayna Grosz is a writer whose work has been published and shortlisted in the Büro BDP Writing Prize 2020. Her writing also appears in The Angel City Review and Another Chicago Magazine, with additional work forthcoming in A) GLIMPSE) OF). She lives in Berlin, Germany, where she hosts the experimental poetry show CRYPTOMNESIA on Cashmere Radio.

Jana Nowack is a Berlin based artist who studied photography at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig and communication design and photography at the University of Arts in Bremen, Germany. Her work encompasses photography and video installations and was part of exhibitions at KN-Space for Art in Context in Berlin, the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig, at Halle 14, Spinnerei in Leipzig, Spring Break Art Show in Los Angeles/US and C.G.Boerner in New York/US.

Photographs: Jana Nowack
Poems: Dayna Grosz

Edition: 150

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A few years after the “digital turn”. the change from analog to digital production and storage of images. asks the Fotomuseum Winterthur in the exhibition Status – 24 documents from today about the current status. the status and value of the photographic document and the documentary. The term “status” used to have a positive connotation and marked a self-confident display of one’s own stand. one’s own state of mind. so today we sometimes almost anxiously ask about the “state of affairs”; knowing. that this is often uncertain. precarious and mostly in flux. This driving uncertainty is also widespread in the field of photography. The rapid distribution and availability of images and videos in the print media. on the Internet. on social platforms like Facebook. Google. Twitter or Flickr. have led to new forms of communication with documentary images. Often we do not know the authors of the pictures. don’t know anything about the ways. who left a picture behind. until it gets to us. How can these photographic documents be understood? how does the scheme of seeing work. Understanding. Discard or save in today’s multimedia environment? don’t know anything about the ways. who left a picture behind. until it gets to us. How can these photographic documents be understood? how does the scheme of seeing work. Understanding. Discard or save in today’s multimedia environment? don’t know anything about the ways. who left a picture behind. until it gets to us. How can these photographic documents be understood? how does the scheme of seeing work. Understanding. Discard or save in today’s multimedia environment?

Featuring: Sammy Baloji, Jules Spinatsch, Trevor Paglen, Willem Popelier, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Walead Beshty, Lukas Einsele, Alfredo Jaar, Ursula Biemann, Dmitry Astakhov, Fernando Brito, Erica Overmeer, Jonas Unger, Lidwien Van de Ven, Lara Almarcegui, Fiona Tan, Unknown Taliban, Moyra Davey, Jérôme Leuba, Gosha Rubchinskiy, Eisenring & Julier, Philip Ursprung, Rory Bester, Alain Servais, Martha Rosler, Juri Steiner, Christoph Ribbat, Meredith Haaf, Elisabeth Bronfen, Philipp Sarasin, Michael Wetzel, Thomas Macho, Reinhard Braun, Andrey Parshikov, Alfonso Morales Carillo, Mirelle Thijsen, Moritz Leunenberger, Heribert Prantl, Bettina Lockemann, Kai Van Hasselt, Kim Barker, Adrian Rifkin, Lukas Bärfuss, Nadine Barth, Reto Thuering.

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I See / You Mean is an experimental novel about mirrors, maps, relationships, the ocean, elusive success, and possible happiness. Through a collage of verbal photographs, overheard dialogue, sexual encounters, found material, and self identi­fication devices (astrology, the I Ching, palmistry, Tarot), it charts from past to future the changing currents between two women and two men­: a writer, a model/stockbroker/maybe dictator, a photographer, and an actor. A lot happens between the lines. Art critic Lucy Lippard wrote this novel in 1970 and became a feminist in the process: “I started writing and realized I was ashamed to be a woman. Then I had to find out why. Then I got very angry. The fragmented visual form came out of contemporary art and the conflicting emotions of 1960s political confrontation; they suggested a new way to put things back together—an open-ended, female way that didn’t pretend conclusions.”

Lucy R. Lippard is a writer, activist, and curator. She is the author of twenty-five books on contemporary art and cultural criticism and has curated some fifty exhibitions in the United States, Europe, and Latin America.

Afterword by Susana Torre
Edited by Jeff Khonsary

First Edition (2021)

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The book comprises 52 imaginary masks made in veneer wood cut technique and was printed from the original plates in 500 numbered copies. It was published by Dfus Golem, a small print shop and bindery that works with letterpress machines and specializes in art books and special-edition prints.

Edition of 500, numbered

Tel Aviv, 2018

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Matt Brand’s second book could not be more of a departure from his first. To embrace the value of incompletion and observing works in progress, the author has published his “Free Writing” note from the Notes app on his phone, where he would capture lines and fragments whenever they came to him between the dates of 9/4/18 and 12/08/20. Some entries are only 2 or 3 words, whereas others are entire poems and paragraphs of thought.

Most published books can only provide a reader with an obscured vantage of the text’s origin, after having taken it through countless rounds of edits and revisions prior to release. Notes App aims to eliminate these confounding factors and hauntological smudges by instead showcasing creative writing ideas and fragments in their original state. The book offers readers the linguistic equivalent of a fine artist’s sketchbook or a recording artist’s draft folder. Here entries may be just as likely to stimulate inspiration as they are to spur reflection on the nature and lifespan of creative ideas.

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