Volume 29, No. 1, Mar 2006
Artist Book Reviews
Most of the books reviewed here are available at Printed Matter, at 195 10th Ave. (between 21st and 22nd St.), New York, NY 10011
Reference
Artists’ Books Revisited, edited by Matthias Herrmann (Vienna: Secession, Toronto, Art Metropole, 2005, $32.00) is the catalog of an exhibition conceived to celebrate Art Metropole’s 30th birthday showing kinship between the Secession and Art Metropole, two artist-run organizations, one founded in 1897, the other founded in 1975. The opening essay is an e-mail conversation between the two founders: Matthias Herrmann and A.A. Bronson. Images of one-of-a-kind artist books made out of mass-produced catalogs from exhibitions held at the Secession in Vienna. These altered “books” become works of art by 50 artists, invited by Matthias Herrmann to take a catalog and alter it in some way. The results range from complete obliteration to minimal additions and subtractions, from collage, to punched holed pages. The catalogs from Doug Aitken, Monica Bonvicini, AA Bronson, Brian Jungen, Terence Koh, Silvia Kolbowski, Albert Oehlen, Rikrit Tiravanija, Sue Williams, Christopher Wool and others are each displayed in two-page spreads and are indexed at the back with complete information about the interventions.
The book features a text by Michael Krebber writing about Henrik Olesen’s Secession book; Matthias Herrmann in conversation with AA Bronson; and an introduction by Ann Dean. a complete list of the artists follows: Doug Aitken, Michael Beutler, Monica Bonvicini, Herbert Brandl, AABronson, Alice Creischer, James Coleman, Ines Doujak, Sam Durant, Ayse Erkmen, Marcus Geiger, Martin Gostner, Renée Green, Henrik Hakansson, Charline von Heyl, Koo Jeong-a, Brian Jungen, Johanna Kandl, Silvia Kolbowski, Terence Koh, Elke Krystufek, Albert Oehlen, Henrik Olesen, Rita McBride, Muntean/Rosenblum, Florian Pumhösl, Josephine Pryde, Trina Robbins, Hans Schabus, Eva Schlegel, Gregor Schneider, Simon Starling, Diana Thater, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Sue Williams, Manfred Willmann, Christopher Wool, Mel Ziegler, Heimo Zobernig. Includes a visual index for each artist.
Resonance and Response is an exhibition catalog of Artists’ books from Special Collections, Wellesley College Library which was published in conjunction with ABC: The Artists’ Books Conference, held at the College on 15 - 18 June 2005. Organized thematically into Concealment and Revelation, Revisioning Science, Family and Self, Place, Heritage, Social Conscience, Music and Word, Others’ Lives, Retelling a Story, and Nature. It is a stunning catalog with full-color images and insightful label texts. Ruth R. Rogers, the Special Collections Library at Wellesley has chosen wisely and well. $30.00 plus postage from Special Collections, Wellesley College Library, 106 Central St., Wellesley, MA 02481 www.wellesley.edu/Library/Friends/sales/sales.html#abccat
ABC: The Artists’ Book Conference, June 15 - 18, 2005 Keynote Addresses (New Haven, CT, Jenny-Press, 2005, $15.00 softbound) includes an introduction by Ruth Rogers & Richard Zauft, the address To Have and To Hold: Why We Need Book Art by Betty Bright; What Will Next Prove a Rose: The Thorny Side of Building the Nation’s Collection of Book Arts by Mark Dimunation, as well as a list of People, Presses & Works Cited. The Jenny-Press is Jae Jennifer Rossman and this is Book 2 of a series. The cover is a color photocopy of a print created by the editor at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts in the class “Printing on the Iron Hand Press” in July 2005. It consists of ABC in many fonts, some wooden type, and printed in red and black. It’s a stunner and the end-papers are photographs of the type ready to print. A real contribution. Write to The Jenny-Press, P.O Box 207057, New Haven, CT 06520. thejennypress@yahoo.com
LITTLE BOOKS
Spoiled: Refrigerators of New Orleans go outside in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. And they have things to say. by Tom Varisco (New Orleans, 2005, $12.00 paper) is what was left after the residents could not return to their homes for at least 3 weeks after Hurricane Katrina hit. They found their homes without power and their refrigerators filled with spoiled food. Most refrigerators were placed outside for pickup and disposal. What Tom Varisco, a New Orleans resident, did was photograph the refrigerators, which became billboards with messages on them–such as Free Gumbo Inside or Spoiled; Smells like FEMA; Maggot Motel; and Katrina Leftovers, Come & Get It, etc. Wonderful little book in color with more messages than those on the refrigerators too!
Utah by Katie Glicksberg (2006, $18 paper) is a book of color photos of non-inhabited landscapes with just a few photos of indications of habitation. Emphasis is on natural phenomena, and they are sweeping photos of mountains, roads as well as man-made phenomena such as bridges. See interstatial.com
NYPL (el norte) by Cristobal Lehyt (Santiago, Chile, 2006, $5.00 paper) is a series of red-filtered photos of life in Chile with ritual, theaters, landscapes, sheet music and parades.
Templates for Limitless Fields of Grass by Gary Kachadourian (Towson, MD, 2005, $3.00 paper) is just that–a Staples-produced copy of templates for fields of grass with instructions to the buyer to reproduce images on a black and white copier full-size on 11 x 17” paper, trim and piece together on any sized wall or walls. Pages may be attached using wallpaper paste, adhesive tape, staples, push pins or other fastening materials.. The pages are folded into yellow paper binding. A readymade from Gary Kachadourian.
Lispering by Josh Petherick (Paris, Nieves, 2005, $8.00 paper) was published on the occasion of the exhibition “In Celebration of Just Getting By” at Colette in Paris. With a rainbow-colored swirl of organic worm-like forms the drawings range from geometric forms to a figure (cartoon-like) high on stress, and the fantasy of Saul Steinberg mingled with Folon. A wonderful tuba is drawn in color with elbow macaroni forms. A real joy!
Then You Ask Why I Don’t Live Here Honey, How Come You Don’t Move? By Jasper Sebastian Sturup (Copenhagen, Fluens Forlag, 2005, $10.00 paper) is a collection of small drawings in black, blue or yellow on white paper.
GENERAL
Holy Trip by Christopher Boutin (Gent, Belgium, Imschoot, uitgevers, 2004, $36.00 flexible binding) imitates a Holy Bible with thin paper, flexible pseudo-leather binding, rounded corners and orange-tinted fore-edges. The idea comes from a movie which Boutin made in 2002, capturing a man quite convincingly dressed as Jesus who took a plane to Rome and then roamed about the city. In the summer of 2004, Boutin returned to the project with Garret Lin and Mélanie Scarciglia. Together, they cobbled together a series of images from the film while Boutin paired each image with a quote from either the New Testament or the Old Testament. The images are quite believable until you see contemporary culture imposing itself on the would-be Jesus. Then it is indeed a return to Rome.
There are very poignant images, which often confront hilarious images, but there is no heavy hand here. In fact, some of the images are haunting, veering closer to the reality of the Bible than not. But the design of the book is what must be emphasized. It reminds one of Dick Higgins’ foew&ombwhnw (Something Else Press, 1969).
4 cantos do mundo, 4 corners of the world, Heimshornin 4 by Maria Lucia Cattani (Porto Allegre, fumproarte, 2005, $20.00 paper) is the result of a project by the artist, which she executed to reside in four public collections spread over the globe. Reykjavik, Awaji City, Devonport and Porto Alegre each contain one corner of the piece along with photographs of the three other cities. The book gathers reproductions of all the included elements, forming a framing overview for the entire artwork. The book’s physical construction consists of thick pages that repeatedly fold in on themselves in a manner that emphasizes boundaries and edges. Short texts in English, Japanese, Icelandic and Portuguese accompany each image. As the artist indicates, the work which is intended to encompass a large part of the planet, is only completed I the imagination of the viewer of just one part of the work or the reader of this book. A truly international experience, trans-global.
Campaign & Products by Candy Factory (Kitakyushu, 2005, 10.00 paper) is a series of seven seemingly displaced images, similar to billboards which advertise products, but the images lack product names. Yet the images through slick lighting and tightly cropped framing give a commercial feeling to the intentions of the artist. Another theme that runs through these images is liquid, which moves from scientists at work with desiccators to a child encountering a high-tech toilet. With these “product” close-ups and frozen moments of life, we seem to be getting an open-ended survey of the ubiquitous techniques and conventions of consumption. Of course, the list by Second Planet of Asahi Breweries, Fijitsu, MOS Food Services, Ritzwell, Shabondama Soap Corp., Takagi and Toto corporations serve to give us product credits in the images. Japanese advertising at its best!
WhiteAss European Cowboy by Arno Hintjens (Gent, Imschoot, uitgevers, 1999, $55.00 portfolio binding) is truly not meant for cowboys of Brokeback Mountain. But it’s quite a fascinating project. The pages are made of recording vinyl with the label half-glued to the center circular hole, but you can lift the half-page and get a full page as a reaction to the music on the label. Each second page is the artist’s reaction to the music, what it meant in his life, and how he reacted as portrayed in a photograph. From Elvis to Bob Dylan, Rod Stewart to the Kinks, Captain Beefheart to Robert Wyatt, Robert Johnson to Otis Redding, P.I.L. to Dr. John and more. This is a performance piece, where the artist performs in photographs the feeling of the artist on the label. A “heavy” book as far as weight and pithy too. A true original! An amazing publishing feat and three cheers to both the artist and the publishing house, Imschoot, uitgevers! Recommended for both contemporary art and music collections.
ZombiTour00 by Francisco Leiva Ivorra (Alicante, Spain, 2005, $40.00 softback) is an experimental publication, the first tour of which is dedicated to the meditations and projects of Grupo Aranea and the graphic work of Francisco Leiva Ivorra. In the 200 pages are 10 unconnected ideas showing design projects, sketchbooks, photographs of natural and man-made rock formations, architectural models, a model of a house of light (and shadow), watercolors, photographs of graffitti, more photographs of sketchbooks with double pages shown. Ed. 500.
I’m Sure Not by Kristofer Hultenberg (Space Poetry, Copenhagen, 2005, $15.00 softbound)is a beautifully printed series of geometric and design elements printed with 6 Pantone colors in an edition of 1000. Hultenberg really has a lyrical way of placement on the page or pages to make a fluency and a setting for remarkable design elements which create poetry on the double pages. The pages flow like choreography. A kind of silent dance evolves through the sequencing.
Hello Victims: Ad Reinhardt by Brian Kennon (Los Angeles, 2nd Cannons Publishing, 2005, $24.00 softbound) is a selection of Reinhardt’s black paintings from the 1960s compared within the equally apocalyptic lenses of nuclear war, Motorhead, and zombie movies in living color. Reinhardt’s paintings are sandwiched into this colorful and aweful holocaust.
Fiasco by Joao Maria Gusmao (Lisbon, Portugal, 2005, $8.00 paper) opens with a quote from Nitzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra regarding luck and success. Emerging Portuguese artist Gusmao then gathers a collection of 40 gouache in this full-color book. The drawings open with a cave suggestive of Plato’s Republic and then continues to reveal hostile, otherworldly landscapes, such as a split Sphinx, a tidal wave, a small figure pushing the stones of Stonehenge, and other such dream-like imagery showing demand physical trials. This kind of “dream diary” imparts an allegorical feeling as the drawings invoke a range of sources from the myth of Sisyphus to the parable of Jonah and the whale. Fiasco means a ludicrous or humiliating performance, but this a beautifully printed bookwork.
Field Guide to North America: Flora, Fauna & Survival Skills by Ranger Shawna Dempsey and Ranger Lorri Millan (Toronto, Pedlar Press, 2002, $28.00 paper) has a soft but flexible binding, because this book simulates an accessible and convenient guidebook. Another in a series of Lesbian National Parks and Services, this volume is wonderfully illustrated by Daniel Barrow. Flora, fauna, knots, as well as the oft hidden bounty of lesbian wildlife is illustrated and explained. Learn the peccadildos of the Bull Dyke Moose; gain insight into the plight of the Painted Lady Turtle; acquire the skills necessary to survive this lesbian-eat-lesbian world. Survival skills such as “Orientation” and “Essential Knots” provide the information you need to enjoy your outdoor adventures to the fullest. Whether you are a veteran outdoors woman or a novice bushwhacker, this is the comprehensive lesbiancrafter manual you have been waiting for.
Handbook of the Junior Lesbian Ranger is a pocket-sized guide for junior members looking to follow the hearty example of outdoor appreciation as set forth by the Lesbian National Parks and Services. Retro-styled illustrations accompany pointers on wilderness survival skills such as fire building and orienteering. This also comes complete with a stitched Junior Lesbian Ranger applique to be proudly fastened to merit sashes. . Palm-sized, this booklet provides a collectible companion piece to The Lesbian National Parks and Services Field Guide… This is a Finger in the Dyke Production (aka Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan). (Winnipeg, Lesbian National Parks and Services, 2001, $20.00 paper)
Head in the Railings by Siôn Parkinson (London, Book Works, 2006, $14.00 paper) is a series of artist-performances whereby he tries to get into spaces, “ones I convince myself I can fit limbs in. I photograph myself doing it, camera on tripod, time on camera. I explain each experience, building up a loose taxonomy of the places I’ve been in. From my pillowcase to the shifting shadow of a tree.” Each photograph is accompanied by a long statement by the artist showing the difficulties, the light or just describing the space. Squeezing into a sink or under a cupboard, emotions being described, physical difficulties always cited. Each is a physical test, the artist testing himself always. At times poetic, poignant and performative, this bookwork is a joy and a bargain.
Moscow Plastic Arts by Nick Muellner (Glenside, PA, Arcadia University Art Gallery, 2005, $12.00 softbound) was published on the occasion of the artist’s at the university. Photographs in the new Russia seek out accidental monuments around various construction sites in Moscow. Slabs of poured concrete, rippling plastic sheets and rectangles of brick piles demonstrate Muellner’s appreciation of formalist tendencies over the failings of figurative communist memorials. The photos are printed in color on matte paper giving it an added touch and giving the evolving city optimistic signs of change. Muellner’s eye sees the improvement from chaos to better urban development, always with Modernist aesthetics in mind.
Sheikh ‘n’ Vac by Yara El-Sherbini (London, Book Works, 2005, $13.00 paper) includes El-Sherbini’s drawings and jokes, which play off stereotypes and provocatively satirize representations of Muslims, offset by an apparently indecipherable stream of consciousness. In a running stream of words, the artist sets her stream of consciousness of words very misspelled with coded messages therein, while playfully juxtaposes those words with visual puns, quips, and malapropisms which confront the reader with the tensions of both racial and religious identities. Knowing the U.S. government and its tactics, this looks like a wonderful book to be impounded from the reader. What fun! Fold-outs.
It Looks Like a Smile by Geoff McPetridge (Geneva, Switzerland, Nieves and Solitary Arts, 2005, $14.00 softbound) was published on the occasion of the exhibition by the same name, held in 2005 at Kemistry Gallery in London. The Los Angeles artist has a whimsical almost cartoon-like but painterly approach to drawing and double-page spreads allow him to play on the page with fingers, with a red balloon being blown up, with a cluster of people in rainbow colors done in watercolor, ending in a poem about smiles which says that all smiles have teeth, so do not turn your back on a smile. Terrific graphic control.
Sentimentale Objektivitat by Jesper Fabricius (Copenhagen, Space Poetry, 2006) is a collection of urban art stories with artists intervening on Alexanderplatz in Berlin. The full-page color or black and white images intervene with the U-bahn and stark office buildings, hotels, casinos and a few with human presentation, e.g. open-air markets, etc. The spread contains continuous titles in large geometric fonts. $9.00 paper
Amsterdam, Antwerpen, Koln, Shanghai, Paris, London, Arnhem by Hans Eijkelboom (Amsterdam, 2005) was produced in an edition of 10,000 thanks to the Arnhem Mode Biennale and includes double spreads for each city in the title. Each double-spread contains vertical portraits of people in each city walking in the street. The photographer spent two to three hours in each shopping center. Arranged into grids of individuals spread out over a two-page tabloid size spread, the photographs document the urban fashion unconscious of our times. The tabloid is glossy paper, a kind of newspaper-like insert.
Sayonala Home by Daisuke Ueno (Saitama, 2005, $45.00 slipcased) is a beautifully printed and designed in an accordion fold bookwork, revealing a series of images related to a short poem where on a magical day “houses sailed off like ships onto unknown seas.” Ueno executes a dreamscape of floating amalgamated housing elements in alternating warm jewel colors with earthy tones. The combination of construction and layout creates a book that can be enjoyed page by page or unfolded as a panoramic vista. As usual, the reader/viewer completes the narration, the meaning, and the beauty of this wondrous book.
Lee Valley Leisure by David Robinson (Lond, Generation Yacht, 2005, $22.00 hardback) focuses on the Valley, three miles from central London, an area projected to undergo a miraculous regeneration in preparation for the Olympic Games to be held in 2012. This regeneration has been portrayed in the media as a cure for all social ills that have historically plagued the area. However, the idea of Olympic reclamation and redemption presupposes that the land has no current purpose and is not used, which is far from the truth, as Robinson’s photographs of playing fields, gardens, bowling alleys, and other local gathering spots clearly reveal. His photographs of those who use the area for their leisure activities show how much they enjoy what they do. He portrays all races, ages, and backgrounds as well as the landscapes which they occupy. Camilla Brown writes the foreword which amplifies and explains the reason for this photographic essay.
Err [sixth edition] by David Shrigley (London, Book Works, 2005, $20.00 softbound) is a wacky and fabulous collection of line drawings, cartoons, articles maps, charts, in its tenth anniversary edition. Shrigley, a Glasgow-based artist, has achieved international recognition; the success of this book has increased as his work has reached an ever-wider audience.
His work has been described as having the ability to make one laugh and cry at the same time. Working across different media–drawing, sculpture, photography and painting–Shrigley’s output defies categorization and, indeed, resists analysis. Far be it from me to try.
Err illustrates the moral and artistic conundrums at the heart of contemporary commentary, using drawings full of bleak humor, that confound th brain and unsettle the soul. This edition, published to mark its 10th anniversary, has a new cover designed by the artist.
Secession: Editionen. General Idea, Pork Salad Press EN/OF Edition Artelier. (Vienna, Austria:Secession, 2005, $25.00 softbound) is the result of an exhibition of multiples published by General Idea, where the three Canadians AA Bronson, Felix Partz, and Jorge Zontal caricaturized, satirized, and imitated the art market. Jacob Fabricius, the Pork Salad Press curator, is a curator, writer, and producer and he asks artists to find relevant stories from newspapers. In isolation, the articles are printed without context, allowing the emphasis to switch to syntax, the bare bones of the news piece, in which truth and falsehood, sense and nonsense are created. En/Of, the publishing house run by Robert Meijer, incudes a group of musicians and conceptual artists. Using the double LP cover as the matrix, En/Of combines a two-dimensional artwork measuring 30 x 30 cm with a specially-produced vinyl record, each in an edition of 100 copies.
Edition Artelier in Graz has been producing artworks for the past 20 years in close cooperation with prominent artists, emphasizing the multiple in a permanently evolving, imaginary museum. With a full-color printed group of reproductions for each publishing house, the catalog represents an homage to the multiple edition.
The Early Writings of Vito Acconci by Vito Acconci, edited by Craig Dworkin (Cambridge, MIT Press, 2006, $34.95 cloth) reminds us that the artist began his creer as a poet, studying at the legendary Iowa Writer’s Workshop, was in Paul Carroll’s landmark 1968 anthology, The Young American Poets, and published poems in journals such as The Paris Review, Art & Literature, etc. Much of his early writing remains unpublished and almost all of his published poetry remains in those mimeographed yellowing and staple-rusted self-produced magazines of Manhattan’s Lower East Side’s mimeo revolution. But then by 1970 he moved from the page to the gallery. Here we finally get his early poetry, which represents a talent for form, the zest for using the copier which so many artists and poets found as common ground. During those years, Dwan Gallery produced a series of “Language” shows (1967-70), and the “Software” show at the Jewish Museum and the “Information” show at MOMA in 1971, bringing artists and poets together. And then there was Acconci’s own journal 0 to 9. As he moved from the page to the gallery, it was performance that set him apart and so his poetry also became performative. In this remarkable volume, we see Acconci’s performative page as well, where his graphic design background brings language into the forefront as matter and not as ideas, the physical space of the page, and the physicality of source texts such as phonebooks, thesauruses, dictionaries. Other poems seem to activate the space of the page. Those of us who collected those little magazines in Xerox now see how important Acconci as a major experimental writer (especially when one sees them in this anthology. He is innovative, accomplished and pioneering in letters just as much as in film, video and performance art. Acconci remains edgy in his early writings, as he has become provocative in all other of his endeavors. This is a big book, 411 pages with 15 illustrations. A must which includes a Chronological Bibliography of Acconci’s Published Early Work.
BOOKS FROM BOOKWORKS
Head in the Railings by Siôn Parkinson (London, Book Works, 2006, $14.00 paper or £6.00) is the black and white photo documentation of the artist’s physical interventions into small spaces, using both photographs and text. I am writing this while I am having a back spasm, so you can imagine looking at these amazing physical attempts to squeeze the human body into residual architectural spaces which involve holes, cracks and voids found in buildings and streets. Parkinson shares with us his fears and his sensations of claustrophobia and repulsion, as well as revealing a disturbing sense of pain and absurdity. An incredible performative attempt to document with the camera on a tripod, the timer on the camera. 64 pages full of fear and fun.
Lost in Space by Andrew Dodds (London, Book Works, 2006, $15.00 paper or £6.50) involves the artist drawing on information from NASA Archives, correspondence with specialists in the field and personally gathered ephemera about the first lunar landing on 20 July 1969, using its images, recordings in order to find the objects abandoned at Tranquillity Base; objects, he feels, invested with dreams and aspirations, now having succumbed to obsolescence. With an artist’s imagination and creativity, the chap book appears to be a scientific investigation, but instead, it is a humanistic investigation to the loss of expectations.
BOOKS FROM LUNA BISONTE PRODS (2006)
Instruction Book by John M. Bennett with an introduction by Blaster Al Ackerman is a perfect bound, 177-page of instructions, such as “How to Fungus” or “How to Rice” or “How to Palm” or “How to Pile” in John Bennett’s inimitable style. $9.00 postpaid
Lap Gun Cut by John M. Bennett & F.A. Nettelbeck (a collaboration) has a color cover, 11 pages, and costs $7.00 postpaid.
Me Her The To (Special Issue whereby Blaster Al Ackerman Hacks John M. Bennett’s Poems) with poems by Asylum V. Loder, Glans Ted Sherman, and a new Sonnet by John M. Bennett). 13 pp. ($5.00)
K by John M. Bennett, Rea Nikonova, and Serge Segay (A Zaumist Visual Poetry Collaboration) is 18 pages, full color, $9.00 postpaid.
Order from Luna Bisonte Prods, 137 Leland Ave., Columbus, OH 43214.
PERIODICALS
Daily Constitutional: A Publication for the Artist’s Voice, vol. 1, no. 1 (Winter 2006, $4.28 paper), edited by John Henry Blatter, includes personal essays, tomes about groups of artists, an article by Jessica Slaven about annotated grocery lists, dog walking diaries, manifestoes, and the obsessive cataloging of ideas and resources by Jason d. Szalla, whose cataloging sheets are interspersed among these 15 other artists. Since the mission of this publication is to provide an outlet and forum for the individual artist’s voice, it succeeds with great aplomb. In fact, this is a collaboration and that makes it quite different from the isolated solo artist who works in the studio and finds a show or two. These artists express themselves with distinction and with skill, humor, and sense of audience. This is the bargain of the year, and highly recommended for all artist book collections of multiple publications. Hope there are more issues from Florida.
Paper Rad, B.J., and Da Dogs by Paper Rad and Ben Jones (New York, Ganzfield, 2005, $29.95 paper) is half art book, half graphic novel, interspersing photographs, drawings, prints, comic strips, and junk by Paper Rad with two graphic novellas (“Space Ballz” and “Alfe” by Ben Jones).
The two novellas are comically surreal takes on friendship, love, spirituality, and other space, while the drawings and graphics recall luminous pop icons straight out of a Nintendo game. Printed on three paper stocks in fluorescent inks, this book conveys the energy and invention of one of the most vibrant constellations of artists working today. Paper Rad is Jessica Ciocci, her brother Jacob, and their friend Ben Jones. Synthesizing and reprogramming popular material from television, video games, and advertising. Paper Rad works in an exuberant, neo-primitivist idiom of their own invention. It’s a wild publication that catches the eye, the hand and the mind. Ganzfield does it again!
Shoot no 4 (special edition of 150) includes a signed and numbered print of Dean, a young man, with a poem, several black and white proofs and a full-page drawn love-letter over the portrait. This is an occasional periodical by Paul Sepuya who does the photography.$15.00 softbound plus color print.
Dick Breath, Issue 3 by Mximilla Lukacs and Diva Pittala is another issue dedicated to pornography for women. This is poetry, black and white illustrations, drawings and essays all dedicated to the Pleasure Principle. $10.00 paper
Die Böhm no. 27 is a photo project in the form of a magazine that has been published since September 1999 by Katje Stuke and Oliver Sieber. This issue was published in Toronto in November 2005. “How to Draw a Bunny” includes full-page color photos alternating between the back of heads of single men and women with costumed strange surreal photos of costumed young ladies. $9.00 paper
Die Böhm no. 26 is a portfolio of full-color portraits of young men and women. $9.00 paper
Gaylord Phoenix no. 2 by Edie Fake (Chicago, $4.00 paper) tells how the Phoenix is born of crystal claw, killed his love on desert sand and flees to pyramidal city while his murder dies below the earthshell. A boy appears in a labyrinth ending in the palace of the emperor by whom he is seduced. The boy uses dark magic and becomes a phoenix and cries until sleep.
Gaylord Phoenix by Edie Fake, Issue 3 ($4.00 paper)shows the Gaylord Phoenix drowned by deep magic left on the bed of the ocean. Wind and sea are beautifully portrayed with flowing inked lines. The G.P. sees sea mammals , “specimens” not fish, then gets “waterproofing” and finds the Inner Reef, and then does sexual experimentation with an octopus. He then enters the Temple of the Oracle and thereby hangs a tale, whereby the oracle creates a volcanic eruption in the sea, says he has sexed up only the computers, and intersects with the oracle who says the G.P. cannot destroy sea vapors. Then the Gaylord Phoenix sees the vortex and interacts with it. The drawing is bold and exquisite.
Girls Like Us Lesbian Quarterly (no. 1, Fall 2005, $10 paper) is a high-color journal by Jessica Gysel and Kathrin Hero. The cover is the Techno music star Peaches. Published out of Amsterdam in English, the quarterly includes the actress, Leisha Hailey, interviewed with photographic portraits accompanying the interview. Hailey acts in The L Word. Another interview is with a lesbian filmmaker couple from Amsterdam. The third with with Michele Aboro, world champion kickboxer, who is now an audio engineer in Amsterdam.
Slick photographic portfolios are thematic photos by artists–all in color. The journal ends with an archive of black and white photos of anthem covers, titillating titles, and rock princesses, a tribute to past girl-focused periodicals, as well as an article in color about Stereodykes.and a photo spread by Justine Kurland.
They Shoot Homos Don’t They? no. 2 (Melbourne, 2005, $11.50 paper) for men and their admirers is part art catalog/periodical slickly designed with photos, drawings, and includes an audio compendium compiled by Jimothy K. The editor is Timothy Moore.
The Salvation Army Black Book by Scott Treleaven (New York and Toronto, Printed Matter and Art Metropole, 2006, $29.95 softbound) is a joint production of both institutions. This is an anthology of all ten issues of Treleaven’s infamous zine, This is the Salivation Army, produced between 1996 and 2004. Bound into a soft black embossed cover and accompanied by three black ribbon bookmarks along with black gilt edges, the book contains facsimiles of all ten issues, expanded texts, new collages, and prefaces by Genesis Breyer P-Orridge of Throbbing Gristle and Scott Treleaven.
With its unique combination of punk aesthetics, Blakean mysticism and sexually explicit, radical queer posturing, the zine attracted press, suspicion, and a loyal cult following. During its initial three-year run, the Salivation Army spawned a number of spin-off zines, setting up headquarters in Toronto, Prague, London and New York, and held a series of public and private occultural events aimed at putting the Army’s magical theory into practice.
The zine went into hibernation, and after three years Treleaven released an account of his experiences in the film, “The Salivation Army”, which is now officially considered issue #9 of the zine. Issue ten ws released when Art Metropole published a “best of” compendium of the zine shortly after the film came out.
With the publication of The Salivation Army Black Book, Printed Matter presents this probably final incarnation of Treleaven’s decade-long project. The collages, drawings, photographs, texts and testimonies from over 50 contributors bring the Salivation Army to eternal life even as the zine itself is seemingly being laid to rest. In this zine world we are living, it is a tribute to find an anthology of such a pervasive zine.
Capricious in its third issue (it’s a twice-yearly pictorial magazine featuring full-color mini-portfolios of a dozen international emerging photographers) features taxonomies of hospital beds and alpine highways, portraits of men who obsessively collelct vintage vacuum cleaners, and a study of a Belgian house with 100 rooms inhabited by a single woman. The magazine consists mainly of full-page images with a series of short artist biogrraphies at the end. Included are Christoph Burtscher, Paul Sepuya, Mark Niederman, Jake Rowlands, Ina Senftleben, Matthew Frost, Roos Gils, Brian Berman, Michael Jelski, Tonk, Todd Fisher and Paula Miklosevic. A wonderful showcase of contemporary young photographers! $14.99
Carte d’Arte internazionale, Spring 2006, Christian Philipp Müller, edited by Cornelia Lauf with essays by Jan Avgikos, Hilde Bouchez, Marella Caracciolo, Susan Hapgood, Elizabeth Helman, Volker Kaul, Elisabetta Povoledo, Nancy Spector and Susan Yelavich. This is a magazine, but also a print-based work by Christian Philipp Müller, who is a Swiss-born artist living in New York, who uses media, often in a collaborative and sociological manner. With Sicily as the theme of the magazine, the artist went with a travel magazine mode as his medium. His work ranges from the annual report of a media conglomerate, in items dealing with cultural self-representation, biodiversity, and in the role of food and nature in our lives. Printed in Messina, Sicily, this oversize full-color half-artist book, half-magazine emits the odors, the tastes, and the cultural oppositions of the Sicily no one really knows but appreciates. Brilliant tour de force. $10.00
Thrown Rope by Peter Hutchinson (New York, Princeton Architectural Press, 2005, a Blind Spot Book, $29.95 paper) is another bookwork in Hutchinson’s exploration of the landscape that, from the sixties on, became his life-long pursuit. In those years, he traveled to the American West, to Mexico, to the Caribbean, and then created work around New York, New Jersey and in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Then he started ocean projects in the sea off Tobago Island, the mold project on the edge of the Paricutin Volcano in Mexico, in his native England and the mold sculptures created in the studio all date from this time.
Having come to the U.S. in 1953 as a student, he moved to New York in 1961 and by 1968, had become friends with Bill Beckley, Dan Graham, Sol LeWitt, Dennis Oppenheim and Robert Smithson. Oppenheim and Smithson became close friends. He used the landscape and horticulture as his media, creating “narrative” art works, combining his usually handwritten, witty and poetic texts with photographic images. But his mainstay was Land Art, which became his emphasis from 1968 on, creating earthworks for over 35 years. But many of you probably haven’t heard about Hutchinson, because he really doesn’t use the techniques of the other art stars you know. He is modest; his modest, fleeting work is extraordinarily beautiful, intelligent, and endlessly charming. This reader has known Hutchinson through his bookworks, which have left a mark on my psyche. His early alphabet book was a stunner and of course “u” was for Umbrella.
Most of his work is ephemeral, produced out in the open, where they are subject to the whims of nature. Much of it is produced by the “thrown rope” method–literally throwing ropes over an expanse of land, then placing lime or planting flowers along the lines determined by the ropes. The result is a snakelike garden or swerving lines of bleached land. He even throws ropes underwater, planting flowers at the bottom of a lake or stringing oranges or onions beneath the water’s surface.
With 100 four-color plates all captioned in Hutchinson’s own handwriting, this is a kind of retrospective of a dedicated artist’s career whose work is temporary and only documentation can allow one to remember and admire this under-appreciated artist, one of the best of our time. Essay by Carter Ratcliff, with a postscript by Bill Beckley. This will stimulate the juices for appreciating this unsung creative being.
COMICS
Carrot for Girls by Matthew Thurber (New York, picturebox, 2005, $5.00 newsprint) is a conglomeration of peace punks, overweight cats and metaphysical journeys. Ed. of 500. Tabloid-size comics.
The Hobbit by Marc Bell and Peter Thompson (New York, Picture Box, 2005, $5.00 newsprint) are full-page tabloid-sized portraits of a magical being commenting on our culture in its convoluted lines and curves. Intensely dense with information in the drawing.
DVD
A Ship is not an Island, a 10-minute film by Jesper Fabricius with music (Ohoj Film, Space Poetry,2005) is a short experimental film by Tal R with Jesper Fabricius, and Steen Moller Rasmussen with music by Fos,, Uagn E. Olsson, Anika Lori, Mikeel Hess, Jesper Fabricius, and Steen Moller Rasmussen. The camera follows his hands drawing, painting, and collaging paper shapes onto actual landscapes. Abract flickering of color and figures are engaged in a mural painting project as well. The final mural is stunning, with large shapes delineating waves, clouds and the ship. $30.00 in a case which is a painted striped portfolio or covers. Fabricius is shown flipping the pages of his sketchbook–so this is an artist showing an artist book and his other activities. $30.00
