While German painting of the postwar period essentially concerned itself with coming to terms with the past and presenting it in gestures ranging from the heroic to the ironic, Daniel Richter focuses on positioning himself in the present. Time and again he devises new ways of being "modern" in a medium that has long been labeled old-fashioned and anachronistic. His pictures constantly challenge the spectator by their painterly and contextually excessive demands, but they do not lecture on moral issues. In five chapters featuring more than 200 examples of his works, the author Eva Meyer-Hermann traces the chronological development of Richter's artistic output for the first time. The turns from abstraction to figuration and back again that until now have been described as abrupt, prove on closer examination to be a logical consequence and a sign of conscious artistic action.

Developed by a young group of artists from New York, Paris, and Frankfurt in collaboration with the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, the room-filling installation "En Passant" makes use of unusual lighting, interesting sculptural objects, and sound in order to present a contemporary perspective on surrealism. Included in the installation--and reproduced here in nearly sixty stunning full-page photographs--are a collection of unsettling sculptural works, among them dismembered bodies and severed heads. Together, the artworks draw on common surrealist themes--including money, massacre, and the tense relationship between reason and authority-- and demonstrate surrealism's continued relevance for contemporary art. Closely linked to the surrealist practice of staging art, the installation intentionally straddles the border between exhibition and experience, leaving viewers unsure of whether the artworks are meant to be merely viewed or altered, used, or touched. In addition to the many photographs, this volume also documents the development of "En Passant "and includes interviews with the artists, shedding light on the important influences and art historical references in the work.

This volume takes on the challenge of representing a sound installation by the Swiss artist Daniele Buetti, commissioned by the Schirn Museum in Frankfurt, which transfers color theory, meditation, and hypnosis into an artistic context. It's All in the Mind is built around a twenty-five-minute audio performance that takes the audience through the techniques of hypnosis. In the work, Buetti uses techniques that rely on "color purification," conjuring up different colors and their varying psychological effects. Interviews with specialists in hypnosis and in Buetti's work complement the illustrations and help explain and interpret the work.

What can we hope to learn about a person from a split-second portrait? The expression that confronts the viewer's gaze--startled, friendly, or shy--undoubtedly affects how we feel about the person. But what if we are faced with dozens of photographs of the same person? Or several sets of seemingly identical photographs taken a fraction of a second apart and reflecting almost imperceptible change? New York-based artist Roni Horn has long been fascinated with the concept of personal identity and how it is--or is not--represented by the photographic portrait. This book brings together Horn's most recent work, a site-specific series designed for the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt. Continuing in the tradition of her earlier work, the series makes use of multiple images of the same subjects in order to explore similarities and differences in portraits, including a set featuring Isabelle Huppert, in which the iconic French actress portrays characters past. Horn is one of the most intriguing American contemporary artists and the subject of major recent retrospectives at the Whitney Museum of Modern Art and the Tate, and this book offers readers a look at her most recent work.