Brian Sholis - Böcker

A survey of a unique archive of ephemera from one of the art world’s splashiest eventsSince 2007, the library of the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, has built an unparalleled archival collection related to the Venice Biennale—a global celebration of contemporary art, complete with national pavilions and thematic exhibitions in grand villas. In Art’s Biggest Stage: Collecting the Venice Biennale, 2007–2019, readers can experience these art extravaganzas through related ephemera from the Clark’s holdings: artist editions, books, posters, publicity materials, and miscellany (as diverse as pop-up books, tote bags, and wallpaper), much of it illustrated with new photography. By publishing this fascinating and ever-growing trove of memorabilia for the first time, Art’s Biggest Stage will serve as an on-going companion to the Biennale and a resource on the Clark’s collection. In addition, it uses the objects at the Clark as a lens to explore the same questions of nationhood, identity, and spectacle that are central to the experience of the Biennale itself.Distributed for the Clark Art InstituteExhibition Schedule:Clark Art Institute(July 4–October 14, 2019)

The luminous work of Bill Armstrong has long stretched the boundaries and expectations of contemporary photography. In his explorations and subversion of the ostensible objectivity and precision that have distinguished photography among the visual arts, Armstrong foregrounds the medium’s qualities that photographers had been attempting to exploit since the beginning of the twentieth century: colour and focus.All a Blur showcases Mr. Armstrong's Infinity series, an ongoing project he has been working on for over 25 years. The book presents 21 different portfolios, all made by using his unique process of photographing a collage of found or appropriated images extremely out of focus or distorted by handheld time exposures. The variety of subjects and results he achieves with this process is so broad it has been said that he has developed a medium of his own invention that lies at the intersection of photography, painting and collage.  With mysterious and poetic images that reflect on history, philosophy, identity and spirituality, Armstrong conjures a unique alternate reality that might exist in dreams, in memory, or, perhaps, in a parallel universe. At the same time, the subject of the work is colour. By taking away focus and the usual expectations of photography, Armstrong is able to investigate the qualities and effects of pure colour in a profound way, freed from the limits of representation.