Textfield, Inc. » Walther König

Book as Artwork 1960-1972

Textfield — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 00:13:57 +0000

Germano Celant, Book as Artwork 1960-1972
Softcover, 104 pp., offset 1/1, 5.5 x 7 inches
Edition of 800
ISBN 978-0-9829694-0-3
Published by 6 Decades Books

$20.00 ·

Nearly three decades after its first printing, Book as Artwork 1960-1972 remains a widely-cited landmark in the critical literature on artists’ books. Penned by the critic and curator Germano Celant to accompany an exhibition at Nigel Greenwood Gallery in London, it was the first critical consideration of the artist’s book. A bibliography lists over 300 historic artist-produced publications from this golden age of the medium.

The book is a medium that requires no visual display, other than to be read, and the active mental participation of the reader. The book imposes no information system but the printed image and the word; it is a complete entity in which both public and private documents are reproduced. The book is a collection of photographs, writings, and ideas — it is a product of thought and of imagination. It is a result of concrete activities, and serves to document, and to offer information as the means and the material of art. It is considered an object of study and of testimony and does not appear esoteric or unreal, but fits into the daily communications system without any aesthetic or artistic pretension. It is only another space… and can therefore be considered an art work.

— Germano Celant

Zeitungsphotos

Textfield — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 18:01:14 +0000

Hans-Peter Feldmann, Zeitungsphotos
Softcover, 48 pp., offset 4/4, 150 x 210 mm
Edition of 2000
ISBN 978-3865601-77-3
Published by Walther König

$22.00 ·

Hans-Peter Feldmann’s idiosyncratic field research investigates the momentum of human perception and the processing of images. This tight collection includes found images of an erupting volcano, a red-eyed ape, a competitive swimmer and celebrity shoes, among others–all taken from journalistic sources.

The Second Sentence of Everything I Read is You

Textfield — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 19:19:03 +0000

Stephen Prina, The Second Sentence of Everything I Read is You
Softcover, 176 pp., offset 4/4, 215 x 270 mm
Edition of 2000
ISBN 0-978-3-86560-512-2
Published by Walther König

$45.00 ·

Preface by Karola Grässlin.

Essays
The Great Persuader by Astrid Wege; How Far We’ve Come From The River, a conversation between Bennett Simpson and Stephen Prina.

Describing Conceptual artist and musician Stephen Prina’s work in 2004, the Harvard Gazette wrote, “Prina’s artwork is full of unsuspected surprises, secret compartments that pop open to release compressed bundles of meaning or coiling strands of narrative.” His work at the 2008 Whitney Biennial, for example, was conceived as “a traveling spectacle — a mini-Broadway-musical-on-the-road or circus,” according to the artist. This concise retrospective volume presents work from 1979 to 2008, as well as installation views of Prina’s recent one-person exhibition at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden in Germany.

Art from Los Angeles: From the 60s-90s

Textfield — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 16:20:31 +0000

Gregory Williams, Art from Los Angeles: From the 60s-90s
Softcover, 48 pp., offset 4/4, 215 x 270 mm
English and German
Edition of 2000
ISBN 9783865603241
Published by Walther König

$26.00 ·

Since the 1960s, Los Angeles has been a hub for groundbreaking art. This slim volume features work by Bas Jan Ader, Michael Asher, John Baldessari, Chris Burden, Douglas Huebler, Larry Johnson, Mike Kelley, William Leavitt, Paul McCarthy, Bruce Nauman, Maria Nordman, Raymond Pettibon, Stephen Prina, Allen Ruppersberg, Ed Ruscha and Christopher Williams.

Multiples 1982-1997

Textfield — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 04:32:36 +0000

Martin Kippenberger, Multiples 1982-1997
Softcover, 144 pp., offset 4/4, 215 x 270 mm
Edition of 2000
ISBN 9783883756783
Published by Walther König

$35.00 ·

This latest reference work on Kippenberger catalogues all of the multiples produced between 1982 and 1997, documented by title, year, format, motive, edition, signature, and production. Here you will find many hard-to-describe works, including Mirror Babies, ELITE ‘88, Upside Down And Turning Me, Disco Bombs, and Kippen Seltzer.

Of two minds, simultaneously

Textfield — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 19:36:50 +0000

Richard Hawkins, Of two minds, simultaneously
Softcover, 164 pp., offset 4/1, 215 x 280 mm
Edition of 2000
ISBN 978-3-86560-425-5
Published by Walther König

$59.00 ·

This monograph on Richard Hawkins is published on the occasion of his first institutional overview exhibition with works from 1993 to now: starting with his collages from the 1990s — intriguing because they show how a powerful artwork can originate from very few visual means – right up to his recent dolls houses transformed into brothels that herald another completely new direction in Hawkins heterogeneous oeuvre. In his work Hawkins looks both critically and appreciatively at social, cultural and historical phenomena, mixing these with autobiographical motives to create a multiform body of work linked by countless internal references in ideas, material and style. These formal and internal links resonate throughout the whole book as components of themes that range from male desire, gender issues and pop star idolization to the struggle of mixedrace Native Americans or the function of hermaphrodite statuary in the Roman era.

A Manual For the 21st Century Art Institution

Textfield — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 19:28:35 +0000

Shamita Sharmacharja, A Manual For the 21st Century Art Institution
Softcover, 184 pp., offset 2/2, 150 x 210 mm
Edition of 2000
ISBN 978-3-86560-618-1
Published by Walther König

$42.00 ·

A Manual For the 21st Century Art Institution invites 12 writers — artists, academics, curators and gallery and museum directors—to assess the present trajectory of arts institutions by explicating various issues, each of which is associated with an imaginary room. Readers journey from the reception to the roof terrace via rooms dedicated to temporary exhibitions, site-specific commissions and collections displays, taking in the bookshop, café, auditorium and education spaces along the way. Bruce Altshuler, Iwona Blazwick, Chris Dercon, Maria Fusco, Caro Howell, Charles Merewether, Mark Nash, Brian O’Doherty, Niru Ratnam, Sukhdev Sandhu, Adam Szymczyk and Nayia Yiakoumaki are our guides to this inviting theater. The result is an indispensable handbook for art professionals, students and anyone curious about today’s art world.

Hans Ulrich Obrist and Hans-Peter Feldmann, Interview

Textfield — Tue, 18 May 2010 22:15:01 +0000

Hans Ulrich Obrist and Hans-Peter Feldmann, Interview
Softcover, 130 pp., offset 4/1, 165 x 220 mm
English and German
Edition of 2000
ISBN 978-3-86560-660-0
Published by Walther König

$49.00 ·

Hans Ulrich Obrist and Hans-Peter Feldmann, who have known each other for around 20 years, talked about the possibility of an interview for quite some time. They finally decided that Obrist pose the questions in writing, and Feldmann answer each of them with a picture.

The Collected Works

Textfield — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 22:52:01 +0000

Frances Stark, The Collected Works
Softcover, 160 pp., offset 4/1, 220 x 280 mm
Edition of 2000
ISBN 978386560263
Published by Walther König

$54.00 · out of stock

The Los Angeles-based artist and art writer Frances Stark has gathered an international cult following for her prolific prose and her smart, honest and intimate artwork. This engaging artist’s book is conceived as a companion piece to Stark’s Collected Writings 1993–2003, fashioning itself as a graphic counterpart that draws from the artist’s paintings, collages, drawings, videos, poetry and more, from 1993 to the present. Through provocative and diaristic text notes printed alongside Stark’s sometimes humorous, often self-scrutinizing images, The Collected Works addresses the paradox of reproducing visual art that is essentially non-photogenic by nature — because of its tactility, detail or scale. The book formally addresses how verbiage flows in and out of the work(s), and leaves no space for the legitimizing language of the critic or curator. Neither a typical catalogue nor monograph, it pushes for a third form, a new art work constructed from existing pieces.

Album

Textfield — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 00:13:19 +0000

Hans-Peter Feldmann, Album
Hardcover, 308 pp., offset 4/4, 240 x 305 mm
Edition of 2000
ISBN 9783865602602
Published by Walther König

$95.00 · out of stock

Pin-up girls, weight-lifting studies, newspaper clippings, baby pictures…Hans-Peter Feldmann tells stories with pictures. Accordingly, apart from the title page, this photo album contains no text. Even the frontispiece is a photograph of boxes from Feldmann’s picture archive — amassed over many years and comprising images from magazines, advertising supplements, photography books, postcards and collectibles. Travel photos, family snapshots and pictures of friends play their part as well. In recent years, Feldmann has become increasingly noted for his commentary on the way we archive photos, sending up the everyday from a very personal perspective. He seeks out the trivial incidents, the unnoticed moments, and keeps them close at hand. According to Feldmann, “Works of art should not be expensive, nor unique, but cheap and fast to produce. A painting immediately acquires a sort of importance, whereas a photo is much more arbitrary, as it’s a lot easier to throw away.”