Products

Michael von Graffenried believes in the power of the photographic image, in his talent to provoke, to surprise, to inform, to reveal. With his photographs he breaks taboos, peeks behind the scenes, or picks at the wounds. His black-and-white pictures do not follow any esthetic rules – they authentically illustrate the story behind, touch the viewer and make one think.

From videos by Frank Ocean to the “Guardians of the Galaxy“ movie, tapes have become increasingly prominent in cinema, advertising, and, of course, the music industry. And as tape sales in the US grew by 74 percent last year, it is time to address past, present and future of the “Compact Cassette“ as icon of popular culture. New generations of individuals, record labels and DIY communities are rediscovering its unique characteristics, adapting them to a contemporary context. In the age of soulless MP3s and similar digital formats there is a real appreciation for the physical qualities of an item that can be collected, exchanged and individually designed. This volume covers themes such as recording and design, “distro“ as distribution source, interviews and provides a step-by-step manual to conducting own tape experiments.

Highway rest areas are usually art-free zones, but the “Relais du Saint-Bernard“ on the A9 is an exception. It has been selected by curators Simon Lamunière, Véronique Mauron and Julia Hountou as the prime location for the TRIENNALE Valais / Wallis 2017. It’s a paradoxical setting where nature, mobility, consumption and freedom come together in which the works of thirty international, Swiss and local artists will be created and installed. The exhibition at this extraordinary spot offers the chance to venture off well-trodden and clearly defined paths and glimpse what lies beyond the gleaming surfaces of the cultural business that has become increasingly trapped by rigid, habituated practices. Taking the form of a guidebook, this publication presents and explains the exhibited works in two volumes, one with images, one with texts. Furthermore, it includes a map of the location as well as a booklet on the Valais art institutions that are responsible for this remarkable art triennial.

Peter Panyoczki is at home on two continents and thus his life is that of a perpetual emigrant – a person permanently on the move, which is also reflected in his work that is permeated by signs of presence during absence. He belongs to the 1980s generation of artists who polemically rejected conceptual art yet did not simply return to figurative art. Instead, they have a conceptual interest in the question of art as a medium: art is perceived as a medium when its visibility is put to the test. His work expresses the paradox of communication that refuses to reveal itself by providing information of what it is made of. It is pleasantly free of morality, while at the same time it does not avoid the tension created by self-irony and a socially reflected “cultural criticism.” This monograph presents his work of the past 13 years, investigating it from various aspects in a series of very different contributions.

John Sparagana is an artist and the Grace Christian Vietti Chair in the Visual Arts and Chair of the Department of Visual and Dramatic Arts at Rice University. Reto Geiser is an architect and scholar of modern architecture with a focus on the intersections between architecture, pedagogy, and media. The work of Sparagana is known for its various types of physical manipulation. Following this concept, this book proposes an alternative “reading” of his work in the form of a literal understanding of visual information as text. His large-scale work of art “Crowds & Powder: The Revolutionaries” is translated into the format of a mass-market paperback book. Arranged over eighty double-page spreads, each individual page frames a full-scale fragment of this work. Not only does it allude to a growing discourse on the control and manipulation of visual narrative, as increasingly witnessed from political imagery to popular culture, but it also investigates the way we read and process (visual) language.

Inspired by Antoni Gaudí’s Parc Güell in Barcelona and the mannerist Bomarzo Park, Niki de Saint Phalle created her sculpture park in Garavicchio, in the southern-most part of Tuscany. In this vast garden, the 22 cards of the tarot’s Major Arcana are represented in the form of enormous sculptures, 12 to 15 meters high. This enchanted world was, for her, the ultimate achievement of her oeuvre, its culmination. When she died in 2002, she left the Tarot Garden uncompleted. The book it is a piece of art in its design, inspired and created by Saint Phalle herself.