Bøger udgivet af VFMK

Im Grenzbereich zwischen Abstraktion und Gegenständlichkeit arbeitet Achaintre mit Materialien wie Wolle, Keramik und Wasserfarbe, die eine spontane, intuitive Bearbeitung erlauben. Konstante Elemente in ihren beseelt wirkenden Werken sind die Maskerade, das Dunkle, Geheimnisvolle und Unheimliche. Inhaltlich und formal setzt sich die Künstlerin mit mitteleuropäischen Karnevals- und Faschingsbräuchen auseinander. Einflüsse von Horror und Science-Fiction finden ebenso Eingang in ihr Schaffen wie die Auseinandersetzung mit der musealen Präsentation von ethnologischen Sammlungen. Achaintres Werke weisen kunsthistorische Bezüge zum deutschen Expressionismus, zum Primitivismus, zur Arts-and-Crafts-Bewegung und zum Fauvismus auf.Die Publikation begleitet eine raumspezifische Einzelausstellung der deutsch-französischen Künstlerin im Belvedere 21, und gibt Einblick in das vielfältiges Werk von Achaintre, die tradierte Techniken wie Tapisserie, Zeichnung und Keramik unkonventionell anwendet.

Renate Krammer conducts an empirical investigation into the possibilities inherent to the horizontal line and to the material of paper on the basis of the artistic process. She directs her attention to the various degrees of hardness in pencils, the characteristics of paper, the dimensions of the pictorial ground, and the various instances of overlapping lines, as well as to the parameters of space and time and the facets of perception. Over the course of a precisely structured series of successive processes, the focus of her exploration of the picture is on color, material, surface, densifications, and empty spaces.The catalogue contains more than 300 illustrations of exemplary works from the period between 2019 and 2022. Texts by Silvie Aigner, Günther Holler-Schuster and Benedikt Steinböck convey insights into the working technique and conceptual world of the artist.

Between Venice, Innsbruck and Florence, the Austrian painter Franz Jenull (1949-2017) developed - after his studies with Emilio Vedova at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice - in many layers of paint and overpainting, 'sharpenings' as he calls them, and in an interplay of spontaneity and control, a non-figurative painting that combines color and form to create a poetic density that is also musical in its rhythm, thus opening up completely new pictorial spaces.His artistic work, developed dialectically between figurative and abstract from 1980 onwards, is one of the passages. He dissolves the dichotomy between figuration and abstraction that has been carried on since the modernity and, according to Gilles Deleuze, leads it into the 'figural'. The anatomical figure remains the focus of his interest and stands at the beginning of each of his paintings.160 illustrations, divided into four groups of works, provide the first overview of and insight into the artist's solitary pictorial work. The three phases of his work become visible, from the informal paintings at the very beginning, to the 'color bar paintings' at the beginning of the 1990s, to the 'all over painting' of his late work.

"How can an Austrian art museum that has stated its support of a diverse and inclusive society take a critical and appropriate view of phenomena like racism and xenophobia? How can it look at issues such as physical and structural violence, cultural identity, and social exclusion, and also promote the decolonization of thinking? Key points of reference are self-criticism and the deconstruction of the white gaze onto the world, which has always been wrong and one-sided, but whose validity has only been challenged in recent decades." (From the introduction by Thorsten Sadowsky)The publication documents and continues the discourse initiated in 2021 with the two-part exhibition This World Is White No Longer by the Generali Foundation at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg. The focus is on artistic positions that deal decidedly with questions of racism and xenophobia and examine the "change of perspective" as a method for questioning the supremacy of one's own worldview.Works by the artists Karo Akpokiere, Lothar Baumgarten, Danica Daki, Forensic Architecture, Samuel Fosso, Charlotte Haslund-Christensen, Alfredo Jaar, Voluspa Jarpa, Belinda Kazeem-Kaminski, Adrian Piper, Lisl Ponger, and Kara Walker are discussed. The publication also presents the new works developed in several months of intensive work by the Photography and New Media Class of the University Mozarteum Salzburg for a project exhibition at the Generali Foundation Study Center.

The author of the book lovingly calls it a naïve attempt to make the art world a little bit happier. After living and working in the art world for the past fifteen years, Christoph Noe brought pen to paper to gather some thoughts on how to navigate in the culture industry."It first developed foremost as a guide for myself as I continuously challenge the mission that I am on in the art world, asking myself why I am still doing what I am doing. Or sometimes, more dramatically, "If art is used in therapy, why do we almost need therapy when working in the art industry?" With a strong believe in the power of art and cultural creation and over multiple conversations and with the encouragement of my art- world crew, I came to the conclusion that these guidelines can function as a possible motivator, as a collection of thoughts or critical questions not only for myself but also for other people and collaborators working in the scene."Christoph NoeSomewhere in the art world, September 2022

LOVING OTHERS - Models of collaboration is appearing on the occasion of the same-named exhibition at the Künstlerhaus Wien. The exhibition-curated by Christian Helbock und Dietmar Schwärzler-aims to help make artist groups and their different collaborative models and forms of social bonding and solidarity be productive, as well as to tell stories of constructive failure. The exhibition sees itself as an experimental field for observing and comparing collectives, artist groups, and even temporary collaborations in a differentiated and engaging way.The publication, which is not intended as an exhibition catalogue, accompanies the show. It collects and presents discursive texts on the topic, additional material, further contributions by artists, and accompanying interviews. The publication is an independent, discursive collection of material and provides in-depth information on various forms of collaboration, individual groups or artistic practices for an interested audience.

Ever since the early 1970s, Werner von Mutzenbecher has numbered among the most important protagonists of the cultural scene in Basel: not only as an artist whose works were presented in numerous solo and group exhibitions and are included in many Swiss collections, but also both as a teacher for many years at the Schule für Gestaltung Basel and through his interim directorship of the Kunsthalle Basel during the 1970s. For many decades, his painterly cosmos has been the world around him, with his oeuvre consisting of its abstraction and interpretation in a realization that can variously be figurative, abstract, or also concrete. The artistic expression can also flow into language, literature, video, Super8 or 16mm film. It is here that is to be found the key to the complexity of his oeuvre and hence to the multiplicity of media which Mutzenbecher knows how to activate.The present monograph was created on the occasion of his solo exhibition at the Kunsthaus Baselland and offers for the first time a comprehensive overview of his extensive artistic production, discussed by colleagues and authors from different areas such as film, video, literature, art history, etc. An illustrious polyphony to a life in pictures.

With its 440 photographs, this book, which is unique in its kind, highlights important milestones in the history of music that have also been formative for us. VOICES offers insights into the life stories of artists. Outstanding performers tell us about experiences with their colleagues, renowned personalities in the music and theater scene. And they also give us glimpses into their private realms: making music at home with their families, social backgrounds, and such sensitive themes as setbacks, fears, or long-yearned-for appreciation, and how they found the key to their voices. This impressive volume represents history from 1945 to the present, passed down by way of personal accounts.The texts are based on conversations conducted by Christine Cerletti and Thomas Voigt during the pandemic in 2021/22, or they were written by the artists themselves. Choosing diverse approaches, they outline how the stage can become an emotional space. Their stories are musical history narrated from a personal perspective. The desire to share things is incredibly strong. What remains after the caesura established by the pandemic: (musical) theater is closeness.

If the pictures that the artist created are in his studio, the artist can not only destroy them; he can also deny having created them- as he harms no one through this. But as soon as these pictures are circulated-when they are exchanged, sold, exhibited, reproduced, etc.-this puts an immediate end to the untruthful denial of the authorship: an artist who created a work may not untruthfully say of this work that he did not create it. And this is the very focus of the matter that provided the impetus for this book.

The monograph NI MÁS NI MENOS provides the first extensive overview of the exceptional painter Matías Sánchez (living and working in Sevilla, Spain). The publication includes hundreds of illustrations of his paintings and views of his studio. Through a text by Cy Schnabel, an interview of the artist with Jennifer Tang and an essay by galleries Michael Zink, Matías Sánchez¿s unique work gets contextualized.Through his own exploration, the self taught artist developed a signature style of vivid painterly surfaces as a backdrop against spirited characters and objects. He pays homage to Post-Impressionist artists such as Paul Gauguin, and cites Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning as inspiration. At times smoothly rendered, at times crudely abstract, the artist uses recurring images including sausages, bones, rats and people with menacing expressions, to form grotesque dreamscapes, exploding with energy. The results are striking, intense images and colors.Matías Sánchez's work can be found in the public and private collections of the CAC Malaga; S. Goodman Collection, New York; Art Museum of the University of Southern California; Benetton Art Spain Collection; Luc Caurichon Collection, Paris; amongst others.

The catalog Floating was published in accompaniment of the exhibition of the same name at Osthaus Museum Hagen. It provides an overview of the artist¿s recent works, which deal with constant change, becoming and passing. Since the beginning of 2018, Monika Kus-Picco has been working exclusively with medicines that serve as pigments. This involves using "expired" medical products and liquids instead of industrially produced paints and pigments, which are then applied to the canvas. This gestural, physical process gives the paintings a novel color palette and a startling inner tension. The paintings without beginning and end are reminiscent of the all over structures of Abstract Expressionism of the 1960s. The pharmaceutical material, which has deep associations, gives rise to completely new worlds of color. Monika Kus-Picco crosses the dividing line between natural science and art. The invisible modes of action of medicines are visualized and given a visible form reminiscent of cosmic processes. Medicine is not depicted, it depicts itself.

This publication documents Rivane Neuenschwander's first comprehensive solo exhibition in the German-speaking world. The artist, born in Brazil in 1967, traces fears and hopes in her multifaceted work, showing how they shape people and societies. Her work is characterized by a keen interest in cultural, psychological and sociological issues.The full breadth of her interests is re- flected in this publication. It includes a conversation with Christiane Meyer-Stoll that took place over the entire exhibition period, providing an in-depth insight into Neuenschwander's understanding of herself as an artist; an essay by the Portuguese sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos deals with the Uncertainty Between Fear and Hope; the cut-up poems by writer Anna Ospelt - an outgrowth of the exhibition - testify to Neuenschwander's trust in the power of poetry, which permeates her entire oeuvre, as does the title knife does not cut fire, which is taken from a poem by the lyricist Herberto Helder.

Published on the occasion of their exhibition at Munich's Haus der Kunst, this publication presents an insight into the multifaceted worlds crafted by the pioneering Japanese collective Dumb Type. Founded in 1984 by students from Kyoto City University of Arts, Dumb Type's varied installations and performances deployed cyberpunk imagery in order to critique a highly 'informatised' consumer society that was concurrently rendered passive via the unceasing deluge of data and technological development. The publication contains an essay by the curator, Damian Lentini, an interview with founding member Shiro Takatani, and numerous installation pictures from the exhibition at the Haus der Kunst. The texts examine the continuous investigations conducted by Dumb Type along the interface between technological progress and the human body, and they critically scrutinize the manner in which digital media and technology constitute a formative and irreversible part of our current experience.

The monograph "Inverse Painting" by Gerhard Himmer documents the most recent works by the artist, whose pictures may be understood as a continuation of Concrete Painting.In his painting, Himmer endeavors to empirically transfer into oil paints the supposedly flawless arrangement of information in a digital world. The compositions, which at a first glance seem monochrome and to possess a perfect surface, reveal upon a detailed inspection the workings of chance and chaos and call to mind digital errors. The publication contextualizes Himmer's creative output through reproductions of his works and views of his studio and exhibitions, as well as through the theoretical elaborations of Christian Egger and Manisha Jothady along with an essay by the author Hanno Millesi.

This reader gathers 13 interviews with artists from different generations and backgrounds. Conducted in recent years, these conversations have always been associated with their solo exhibitions at Kunsthaus Baselland, where some were presenting their work for the first time. All conversations have opened up, thanks to the generosity on the part of the artists, new insights and findings on the main or secondaryapproaches within their artistic work. The purpose of this reader is to share with a broad readership the artistic ideas, as they often enable a wider or even entirely new understanding of an artist's work.After reading the book you could understand these talks as an invitation. An invitation to seek, examine, and experience an encounter with a particular artistic work, either once again or for the first time, and ultimately to prioritize your personal dialogue with the artwork over the spoken word.

Das Werk der österreichischen Künstlerin Iris Andraschek ist geprägt von dem Interesse an alltagskulturellen und sozialpolitischen Motiven. Die Beziehung zwischen Mensch und Natur, alternative Lebensentwurfe sowie Fragen über ein gerechteres Zusammenleben sind wiederkehrende Themen ihrer Kunst. Kommunikation ist zentral für ihr recherchebasiertes Arbeiten. Dieses spiegelt sich in Projekten wider, die die persönlichen Erfahrungen der Menschen in den Mittelpunkt stellen. Der reich bebilderte Katalog Iris Andraschek. I love you :-) bietet erstmals einen umfassenden Überblick über Iris Andrascheks künstlerisches Schaffen der letzten 35 Jahre und entstand im Zuge ihrer Werkschau im Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz. Die Publikation versammelt Textbeiträge von Philippe Batka, Katrin Bucher Trantow und Gabriele Mackert sowie eine Auswahl von Kurztexten zu einzelnen Werkgruppen. Dem Buch ist ein Poster mit Ausstellungsansichten beigelegt.

Over the past decades, public space and architecture have changed drastically as a result of modern technology and its influence in gentrification. The precision of technology no longer requires authorship or a real person pulling the trigger in order to document reality. The more advanced technology becomes, the more in control investors become in ownership of urban planning, and the more out of control citizens are to their public spaces. In this case, New York and other large cities have been under constant artistic scrutiny as a result of these municipal changes that call for permanent control and are marked by capitalist trends.The exhibition catalog "Spaces of No Control" features artists who examine the histories of specific places to create a narrative on the defining architectural and social impressions of the urban structure. The core of this show is formulated by photographic examinations of cities and their social strata, which are then transferred into other media to reflect on how to come to terms with this new reality.

Die Linie und ihre serielle Wiederholung sind die zentralen Motive des Schaffens der Künstlerin Haleh Redjaian. In ihren Werken auf Papier, auf handgewebten Teppichen sowie in raumgreifenden Installationen treten gezeichnete, gewebte oder im Raum gespannte Linien immer wieder auf. Die entstehenden Raster, Muster und Strukturen weisen eine strenge geometrische Ordnung auf. Durch ihre subtilen Unregelmäßigkeiten, Verwischungen oder Unsauberkeiten verbergen sie jedoch nicht ihren manuellen Entstehungsprozess. Die resultierenden unendlichen Flächen und Repetitionen fordern bei den BetrachterInnen eine große Konzentration des Sehens ein.Das vorliegende Buch mit dem Titel "in sequence" dokumentiert Haleh Redjaians Ausstellung im Bregenzer Kunstverein im Jahr 2016, in welcher 15 Arbeiten auf einer Ausstellungsfläche von 300m2 präsentiert wurden. Die in der Ausstellung gezeigten Werke sind im Katalog von Texten begleitet, die sich mit den jeweiligen spezifischen Aspekten der Arbeiten befassen. Ergänzt wird die Publikation durch Werkverzeichnisse von Redjaians Teppicharbeiten und Rauminstallationen.

"What I also like is its fixed, focused view-it (photography) only grants the viewer one perspective and imposes a restricted gaze ..." In her first monograph "Bound by Echo", Nadine Bracht combines thematic circles that could not be more different - horses, photography and teaching at an art academy. In the phase when the horse lost its importance with the technical development of the automobile, photography continuously prevailed and became popular. This is the magic moment where, for Bracht, two topics intersect at a kind of historical juncture. As an artistic-technical teacher for photographic media at the Stuttgart Art Academy, she starts here with her research and reflections. She develops teaching formats, image strategies and narratives that stretch and expand the medium of photography in an interdisciplinary way, such as through photo walks, performance, video and sculpture.

In her artistic works, Franziska von den Driesch works with analogue and digital photography, video, and also photographic procedures that do not involve a camera. Her pictures, videos and installations focus on ushering the photographic material into visibility and interweaving material and apparent reality. The silver grain as an elementary particle of analogue photography, just like the pixel and the raster as building blocks of conveyed reality, become independent protagonists in her works. Photographic motifs are dissolved in layerings, or digitally generated images are transferred into analogue photography. The concept of virtual reality resonates as an implicit possibility.In his extensive essay Dr. Rainer Beßling, author and cultural journalist, traces out the fundamental motifs of these photographic works: grain, light, time, paper. The categories already point towards the multilayered, material referentiality of the works. Photography presents itself as a residue of physical encounters, as an index. Of central importance are the visual and auto-poetic potentials inherent to the photographic elements and the photographic processes. The text connects this artistic position with lines of tradition in photographic history and integrates them on a systematic level into what is a contemporary aesthetic and not only photographic discourse.

Since 2003, the accomplished editor Alexander Linn has been following the graphic work of André Butzer. With such intimate knowledge, great care and passion most of all, he now presents the first volume of the catalog raisonné of prints.Graphics are a fully valid part of Butzer's oeuvre from the very beginning and at all times, the prints catch up with the development of his painting in complete independence. Everything is there and decisively formulated. His iconic figures, colors and forms, the basic motifs and themes are present with a clarity only to be achieved in graphic art: From the simplest linocuts to elaborate series in a variety of graphic techniques to the grace and gorgeous colors of recent years.High time for this book, which already is an invaluable reference and an impressive testament to a graphic oeuvre with which André Butzer modestly but with the highest mastery inscribes himself in the long tradition of peintres graveurs.