Over the past two decades, the Chinese conceptual artist, activist, and exile Ai Weiwei has created art that addresses complex and sensitive themes of political, ethical, and social urgency. His artworks, which call upon both Western and Chinese cultural traditions, are deeply engaged with the history of art, drawing particularly on conceptualism and minimalism. Informed by the readymade--central to the work of Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol--his work questions the status of the work of art itself, blurring the lines between art and non-art, invention and appropriation, structure and openness, even fiction and fact. From the start of his multifaceted career in the late 1970s, Ai has envisioned artistic practice as a deeply human, moral, and political endeavor. This volume--a hybrid between a scholarly study and an exhibition catalog--presents the artist's work in dialogue with theoretical texts by the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben and the German-Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt alongside interpretive essays that illuminate the artist's work on human rights, his engagement with historical Chinese artifacts, and his critical consideration of the effects of globalization. The book includes a new essay on human rights by Ai Weiwei and an interview in which he discusses his artwork and activism. It also features installation photographs of the corresponding exhibition. By exploring Ai Weiwei's artistic practice in dialogue with philosophies, theories, and concepts that connect human life and political power, this publication offers new insights into one of the most important artists working today.

The immediate physical presence of color is central to Katharina Grosse's creative endeavor. Through an open-ended creative process in which painting takes on the form of a performance, color embodies movement, making its emotional potential tangible. These issues are not only driving her dramatically large in situ works painted across various surfaces in public places. They also inform her studio paintings, which have played an equally central role in her practice from the start. This book is the first study focusing on Grosse's studio practice from the late 1980s to the present. Five essays and an insightful interview with the artist explore how Grosse expands the concept of painting - not just in open space, but also on canvas - through creating an ephemeral character and removing the limitations of its traditional frame.

Sharon Lockhart: Lunch Break III is the third volume in a series examining the work of acclaimed video artist and photographer Sharon Lockhart. Known for collaborating with remote or marginal communities such as blue-collar workers of the twenty-first century, as she did in Sharon Lockhart: Lunch Break I, the artist also blurs the line between photography, video art, and documentary. The results are staged and artificial, yet at the same time intimate and deeply human. Her newest museum installations also incorporate artworks and utilitarian objects made by others, expanding upon earlier forms of institutional critique. This book includes essays by curators and scholars who provide an international perspective on the artist's evolving series. Stunningly illustrated, Sharon Lockhart: Lunch Break III serves as a reminder of the power and beauty of Lockhart's art.

Thaddeus Strode's vibrant large-scale paintings are universes unto themselves: wild mash-ups of California surf and skateboard culture, Zen philosophy, rock music, literature, film, and comic books. "Absolutes and Nothings" marks the artist's first major museum show, presented as part of the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum's Contemporary Projects series.
Strode's images draw on a wealth of motifs inspired by a broad range of sources in popular culture, freely combined with the artist's own creations. The strength and visual pleasure of Strode's aesthetic come from his self-reflexive combination of painterly styles and incongruous elements, in which enigmatic texts, phantoms, monsters, and castaways play off one another to produce cryptic--and captivating--fantasies. Including over two dozen full-color images of works from 2001 to the present, as well as essays by Sabine Eckmann, Meredith Malone, and Benjamin Weissman, "Absolutes and Nothings" is a fascinating premier monograph from one of our most vital and exciting contemporary visual artists.