The Berlin-based artist, Robin Rhode (* 1976 in Cape Town), engages in a variety of visual languages such as photography, performance, drawing and sculpture to create arrestingly beautiful narratives. Coming of age in a newly post-apartheid South Africa, Rhode was exposed to new forms of creative expression motivated by the spirit of the individual rather than dictated by a political or social agenda. This new publication emphasizes the creative influence of the Italian Art movement Arte Povera during the early sixties and seventies on Rhode's hybrid street-based aesthetic. The creative dialogue transformed urban landscapes and interior spaces into imaginary worlds, compressing space and time, as two-dimensional renderings become the subject of three-dimensional interactions by a sole protagonist. Rhode's work reveals a mastery of illusion, a rich range of historical and contemporary references, and an innate skill for blending high and low art forms.

This book guides the reader in discovering contemporary professions and the critical changes they have lived through after the post-industrial transformation of advanced capitalist societies. Two interrelated concepts are used to interpret what is happening in professional work: differentiation, namely the set of processes by which professions and professionalism have become more diverse, and heterogeneity, the outcomes of such processes. A novel analytical framework  delves into differentiation and understands heterogeneity based on three dimensions: within (how professions are structured internally), between (how professions distinguish themselves from other occupations and from each other), and beyond (how professions govern societal changes and influence differentiation processes). The book presents a collection of studies covering different countries and professions to demonstrate the analytical potential of the within-between-beyond model. The conclusions show how “neo-liberal� professionalism is putting the very idea of collegiate professions at stake while exposing emerging professions to market risks.

Dusseldorf-based artist Thomas Schutte (born 1954) is one of the most idiosyncratic of present-day artists, venturing to deploy techniques, genres and themes long thought passe--such as the sculpturally formed female figure--in permanent materials such as bronze, aluminum and steel. Schutte began his "Frauen" series toward the end of the 1990s and, while his first reclining nudes can be understood within the language of Classicism, his later, monumental figures with sawn-off limbs and various distortions--sometimes with bodies steamrolled flat or in tantalizing poses--resist all attempts at easy categorization. But Schutte's brutal treatment of the female form is motivated less by a desire to shock than by a concern with the figure as a present-day testing ground for artistic expression, one that is frequently shot through with Schutte's characteristic morbid humor. "Frauen" contains almost 200 color reproductions, along with texts by Andrea Bellini and Dieter Schwarz.