The title of this book, "Autofocus Retina" means a configuration of four diamond shaped mirrors connoting the inner mechanics of a camera lens: the photographic eye. Lothar Baumgarten (b. Germany 1944, living and working in Berlin/New York) presents a personal selection of photographs, sculpture, drawings and film, from the late 1960s to the present day. The book follows the creative trajectory of an artist who does not comply with the aesthetic vision of art but who continually questions the logic structuring Western thought and systems of representation. It features essays on Baumgarten's work by Hal Foster, Michael Jakob, Craig Owens, Anne Rorimer and Friedrich Wolfram Heubach. Each text has been chosen by the artist himself along with special graphic illustrations and images.

There is no soundtrack is a study of how sound and image produce meaning in contemporary experimental media art by artists ranging from Chantal Akerman to Nam June Paik to Tanya Tagaq. It contextualises these works and artists through key ideas in sound studies: voice, noise, listening, the soundscape and more. The book argues that experimental media art produces radical and new audio-visual relationships challenging the visually dominated discourses in art, media and the human sciences. In addition to directly addressing what Jonathan Sterne calls 'visual hegemony', it also explores the lack of diversity within sound studies by focusing on practitioners from transnational and diverse backgrounds. As such, it contributes to a growing interdisciplinary scholarship, building new, more complex and reverberating frameworks to collectively sonify the study of culture. -- .

The first true monograph on the work of celebrated French conceptual artist and sculptor Bernar Venet Bernar Venet is one of France's most celebrated living artists. Having emerged from the late 1960s avant-garde scene in New York, Venet developed a personal aesthetic based on an innovative use of mathematics and science, where control, chance, and chaos converge to form a fine equilibrium while investigating their relationship with the environment. Conversant in many media, Venet is mostly known for his monumental outdoor sculptures in major cities worldwide and, in fall 19, his Arc Majeur is due for completion at a site in Belgium - at almost 200 feet in height (60 metres), Venet's sculpture will be taller than New York's Statue of Liberty.

Chacón's work can be read as a pictorially narrated story of the problems of modern and contemporary painting. Throughout his career, genres and aesthetics are transgressed in his artistic production, "pure" painting is invaded by conceptual art or becomes an installation, and the most radical geometry shares the stage with abstract expressionism. This book is the most complete editorial work dedicated to the artist, one of the main protagonists of contemporary Venezuelan and Latin American art. It contains critical texts by authors of international and national prestige, such as Jesús Fuenmayor, Dan Cameron, Nadja Rottner and Félix Suazo; it also includes a complete interview with the artist by graphic designer and curator �lvaro Sotillo and a detailed chronology by Israel Ortega and Leonor Solá.  Illustrated with numerous reproductions of his works and a selection of previously unpublished historical photographs, it is destined to become an essential bibliographical reference.

"The book is an impressive work of scholarship" - Studio International "Richard set about to produce a study of distribution networks, and achieved this through immaculate and thorough research. It is no criticism of the book to say that there are many questions left unexplored ... As scholars of the future think through these and other questions, they will remain grateful to Richard's extraordinary and meticulous scholarship." - Mark Godfrey, Frieze Emerging in the late 1960s, conceptual art was spurred by a network of artists, dealers, curators and critics. These little-known connections are detailed for the first time in this highly significant volume. By focusing on 15 artists - including Marcel Broodthaers, Richard Long, Lawrence Weiner, Hanne Darboven and Daniel Buren - and a specific network of dealer-galleries, private and public institutions and collectors around them, author Sophie Richard documents the role of art dealers in the development of conceptual art - which ultimately led to the structure of today's art world. We learn how conceptual artworks entered private collections and public institutions, how value was conferred to them, and the distribution networks that drove these artists' success. A detailed account of artistic activity in the decade 1967-77 is accompanied by extensive and previously unpublished data, charting the exhibitions and sales of conceptual works. The relationships, support structures and strategies of dealer-galleries - such as Konrad Fischer, Wide White Space and Lisson Gallery - are revealed and make fascinating reading. Including numerous interviews with key figures of the period, 'Unconcealed' exposes the new dealing, curatorial, collecting and teaching methods formed in this decade that continue to be critical to today's art world.

Dark room. The frame of a boat hangs, suspended. A cascade of light fibres flows downwards and the wires are arranged on the ground, like the tentacles of a motionless Medusa, beyond time's limits. Among the protagonists of the international art scene, Adrian Paci uses a straight-forward language - lacking rhetoric to investigate the human condition with refined formal synthesis. In his works, migration, which he experienced in the first person, is sublimated into universal research on the indefinite nature of the human being, and on the complexity of social, political and cultural dynamics intrinsic to contemporary life. The project Di queste luci si serviraI la notte (Lights to Serve the Night) underlines his ability to narrate our times and describe the perpetual transit of man, assimilated to the continuous flow of water and its cathartic power.

Spearheaded by Constantine Sekeris, author of "MetamorFX," this book is an in-depth look at costume design and illustration. Showcasing an educational process breaking down the problematic areas of costume design for the film, video game and animation industries. From 10 top leading artists in the field, this title will have a wide range of aesthetic and design solutions. One will learn how to design and illustrate a costume from start to finish with educational tips and the process from sketches to finished Photoshop images to 3D ZBrush sculptures to fabrication.

As one of the key figures in the first generation of British conceptual artists and a crucial force behind many of the Young British Artists, Michael Craig-Martin has dedicated a career to complicating the practice and reception of drawing. Often considered the 'high priest of the everyday', he is engaged with the methodical exploration of those objects and design classics that are so often taken for granted: the tap, the clothes hanger, the petrol pump, the Anglepoise lamp. For Craig-Martin, those objects that we value least, simply for their ubiquity, are often the most extraordinary. His is a world of revelation.

Returning to revolution's original meaning of 'cycle', Contemporary Revolutions explores how 21st-century writers, artists, and performers re-engage the arts of the past to reimagine a present and future encompassing revolutionary commitments to justice and freedom. Dealing with histories of colonialism, slavery, genocide, civil war, and gender and class inequities, essays examine literature and arts of Africa, Europe, the Middle East, the Pacific Islands, and the United States. The broad range of contemporary writers and artists considered include fabric artist Ellen Bell; poets Selena Tusitala Marsh and Antje Krog; Syrian artists of the civil war and Sana Yazigi's creative memory web site about the war; street artist Bahia Shehab; theatre installation artist William Kentridge; and the recycles of Virginia Woolf by multi-media artist Kabe Wilson, novelist W. G. Sebald, and the contemporary trans movement.

Animals Real and Imagined is a fantastic visual voyage into the world of animals, both real and imagined. There is no end to the diverse and unique creatures that Terryl Whitlatch creates for us with her solid knowledge of anatomy and boundless imagination. Especially intriguing are the 100s of anatomical notes that are dispersed among her sketches, educating and enlightening us to the foundation of living bodies and their mechanics.

MAINTENANT 12: A Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing and Art serves up the controversial theme, "WE ARE ALL A 'LIKE'." With the rise in social media use-and abuse-the concept of "like" has reached whole new levels. There's the idea of an individual's reaction to events, people, images, etc. as a reduction to "Like" or "Dislike" without need for deeper consideration. Then there is the status factor: that something which is "Liked" by the largest number of people is of value. In fact, in the social media orbit, it is seemingly beneficial to offer strong, sharp, simplistic opinions-instead of nuanced, deeper, shaded considerations-simply because they provoke the greatest likelihood of widespread attention. How will this reduction of thought shape the future of interpersonal relations, intellectual advancement, and politics? As we teeter on the brink of nuclear war, the concepts of Dada brilliantly encompass the urgency of present times with both clarity and purposeful confusion. The MAINTENANT series, established in 2005, gathers the work of renowned and emerging dada artists and writers from around the world. The series has been archived in leading international institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art-New York, the BelVUE Museum-Brussels, and more. Renowned contributors have included artists Mark Kostabi, Raymond Pettibon, Giovanni Fontana, Jean-Jacques Lebel, and Kazunori Murakami. Writers have included Allen Ginsberg, Gerard Malanga, Charles Plymell, Jerome Rothenberg, and more, with a strong contingent of punk musician-artist-writers including Grant Hart, Mike Watt, and Exene Cervenka.

Visually arresting and utterly one-of-a-kind, Sarah J. Sloat's Hotel Almighty is a book-length erasure of pages from Misery by Stephen King, a reimagining of the novel's themes of constraint and possibility in elliptical, enigmatic poems. Here, "joy would crawl over broken glass, if that was the way." Here, sleep is a "circle whose diameter might be small," a circle "pitifully small," a "wrecked and empty hypothetical circle." Paired with Sloat's stunning mixed-media collage, each poem is a miniature canvas, a brief associative profile of the psyche-its foibles, obsessions, and delights.

Daniel Arsham mines lusted-after consumer goods and iconic imagery to create his conceptual objects and sculptures. The artist then casts and refinishes his work to imitate the effects of erosion and subsidence, creating monuments to our present obsessions, as if the objects were rescued from Pompeii. That same impulse toward excavation animates many of his installations, which range from layered broken walls to geodefilled caverns to melting portals. From room-collapsing environmental installations for today s leading brands and museums to elaborate set design for classical dance, Arsham twists elements of architecture to create immersive aesthetic experiences that appeal to the divided attentions of a contemporary audience. Presented as an induction manual to Arsham s covetable world, the book will provide a complete overview of his practice. Virgil Abloh discusses Arsham s contribution to a post-media artistic landscape, a thread developed by Hans Ulrich Obrist in a conversation with the artist that traces art-historical precedents. Steven Matijcio will discuss the artist s projects and collaborations, which range from sets for Merce Cunningham s dance company to clothes and sneakers with streetwear icons Ronnie Fieg and Adidas to projects with James Franco and Pharrell Williams and films with Mahershala Ali.

In Six Years Lucy R. Lippard documents the chaotic network of ideas that has been labeled conceptual art. The book is arranged as an annotated chronology, into which is woven a rich collection of original documents including texts by and taped discussions among and with the artists involved and by Lippard, who has also provided a new preface for this edition. The result is a book with the character of a lively contemporary forum that provides an invaluable record of the thinking of the artists - an historical survey and essential reference book for the period.

The beautiful minds of six extremely successful women artists in the entertainment industry present Lovely: Ladies of Animation. The history of art in animation has had many female heroes; this elite group is continuing the tradition and building upon it. Featuring the first published personal works by Lorelay Bove, Lisa Keene, and Claire Keane along with the works of previously published Mingjue Helen Chen, Brittney Lee and Victoria Ying, LOVELY is an indispensible addition to the library of anyone interested in animation. With a variety of styles, from graphic works to realistic portraits, these images will inspire and delight the viewer with each turn of the page."