Germano Celant – författare

The definitive book on a creative force who continues to influence sculpture and installation artJessica Stockholder has long broken down the boundaries between painting, sculpture, and architecture to explore the body in social and cultural space - using found objects intertwined with profusions of vivid colours. This revised, updated edition spotlights the extraordinary evolution of her career, and examines the pivotal role she has played in shaping some of the most fundamental ideas around which contemporary sculpture and painting revolve today.

Chus Burés creates miracles. Each piece of jewelry that emerges from his workshop boasts a complex genesis, stemming from an intersection between his genius-level thought processes and his maverick lifestyle. From exploring the versatility of buttons, to accentuating the geometric planes of the human body (Infinity Lines, 1990), and using minerals to emulate and exaggerate human features (seen in the striking 'Mae Nam' Collection of 2000), Burés' work is always perplexing, always stimulating, and always innovative. He refuses to be cowed by convention, and delights in challenging his clients and models. The bodily focus of his work makes every piece a startling, and often uncomfortable, insight into humanity.Burés may be a maestro of metal - the gauzy chainmail-esque veils in his Crochet collection, 2000, attest to that. Yet he has mastered the emotional dimensions of his jewelry as well as its physical properties. The relationship between his pieces and the people who collect and cherish them is essential to his artistic praxis. In Chus Burés, Portraits & Jewellery (2016), this is realized through a series of intense portraits by Antoine d'Agata, Alberto García-Alix, and Andres Serrano. These pictures reveal a transgressive melding of jewel and subject: man becomes metal and metal becomes man. Watch ideas take on physical form, and immerse yourself in Burés' world of wearable art.Text in English, French, and Spanish.

A massive full-career retrospective for Arte Informale painter Emilio VedovaOne hundred years after his birth, Emilio Vedova examines the career of the Italian painter Emilio Vedova (1919–2006), best known for his role in the postwar Arte Informale movement. The book surveys Vedova’s career in terms of the artist’s investigations of line and gesture: from the lively, energetic landscape drawings of the 1930s through his progress toward increasingly expressive, materially inventive work—like the Plurimi of the 1960s, in which the artist broke up the surface of a picture into multiple pieces.The publication’s account of Vedova’s career is enriched by an extensive set of illustrations: images of the artist’s works, plus reproductions of his personal photographs, texts and archival material that flesh out the artist’s historical and artistic context. Emilio Vedova offers a comprehensive overview of the work of a pivotal figure in postwar Italian art.

This catalogue includes Christo and Jeanne-Claude's realised and unrealised large-scale projects from 1961 to 2016. Besides the famous wrapped monuments, from the Kunsthalle in Bern (1967-1968) to the Reichstag in Berlin (1971-1995), the publication also includes the barriers made with barrels or with fabric, from Wall of Oil Barrels - The Iron Curtain in Paris (1961-62) to Valley Curtain in Rifle, Colorado (1960-62), the great inflatable objects, from 42,390 Cubic Feet Package of Minneapolis (1966) to 5600 Cubicmeter Package, Project for documenta IV in Kassel (1967-1968), and the fabric pathways, such as Wrapped Walk Ways in Kansas City (1977-1978), or doors, such as The Gates in New York (1979-2005).The seven Water Projects - Christo and Jeanne-Claude's installations sharing a connection with water - are considered in further depth. In these projects, from Running Fence, Sonoma and Marin Counties, California (1972-1976) to Over the River, a project for the Arkansas River, State of Colorado (1992), the artists worked on establishing a close connection with natural, suburban and urban landscapes that all share a relation with water, be it an ocean, a sea, a lake or a river. The Floating Piers, an installation that allowed visitors to walk across Lake Iseo, is also included here. Among the Water Projects we must mention The Floating Piers, an installation open from June 18 to July 3 2016, which allowed visitors to walk across Lake Iseo and along its shores on a 3-kilometre route. By means of modular floating piers covered in shimmering yellow fabric, the installation linked the town of Sulzano on the lake's shores, to Monte Isola, also reaching the Island of San Paolo.

The 'imaginary' journey that Gastel has developed through publication in magazines - from Vogue Italia to Harper's Bazaar - advertisement campaigns - from Dior to Guerlain - and exhibitions - from Gastel per Donna to Maschere e Spettri - is displayed through the reconstruction of forty years of experimental and commissioned work, in which 'serial' ensembles and individual products highlight the features of his storytelling, his unique use of light and his comparisons between people and objects.The goal is to document his operating method, based on the analysis and presentation of a subject in series: still life, portrait, fashion shot and personal research.

Arman was a US-naturalised French painter. This book covers the first twenty years of Arman's artistic production, from the Accumulations of industrial objects and series products to the Poubelles, documenting consumer society's waste; from the famous Colères, Coupes and Combustions, which through different processes dematerialise objects depriving them of their functionality, to paintings, to actions and monumental works adhering to the 'poetic of things'.

This volume presents a survey of the collected works of Paolo Pellegrin (1964), one of the most important photographers on the international scene. It was edited by Germano Celant and is the result of extensive work on the photographer's archive. The publication is a collection of over a thousand images, sequenced chronologically by decade so as to retrace Pellegrin's creative and documentary journey. Pellegrin has been a Magnum member since 2005 and was the winner of ten World Press Photo Awards, as well as numerous others, such as the Leica Medal of Excellence, the Olivier Rebbot Award, the Hansel-Mieth-Preis, the Robert Capa Gold Medal Award and, in 2006, the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography.

Rich in critical contributions and a vast iconographic apparatus, the book traces every stage of Mimmo Rotella's career: from the first abstract works to the informal experiences of the 50s, from the relationship with Pierre Restany's Nouveau Réalisme to the tangencies with Pop Art and his relationship with America.Extensive detail is dedicated to his most famous research, the one revolving around the décollages and the back of posters, but also to Rotella's relationship with cities such as New York, Rome, Paris and Milan, with the critics and his contemporaries. This book is published on the occasion of Mimmo Rotella's centenary, and coincides with the largest ever exhibition dedicated to the artist (Rome, GNAM, 30 October 2018 - 10 February 2019).

Considering the activity of the numerous foundations that contributed in spreading new expressive languages, today appears to be a fundamental operation in view of an interpretative widening of art history.Starting from this consideration, this publication - in two volumes - traces the path of the Murray and Isabella Rayburn Foundation, established in New York in 1982 with the aim of promoting Italian art in the United States.

In 1972, Giulio Paolini held an exhibition in New York. Art historian, curator, and critic Germano Celant, who coined the term 'Arte Povera' in 1967, was asked to edit theexhibition catalogue. What followed was an ample monograph that coveredthe course of Paolini's career - his concepts, themes, contexts and influences. This was an unprecedented move, as, until that time, most galleries produced simple brochures. This monograph was one of the firstin-depth and scholarly studies of a contemporary artist, and as such, paved the way for future monographs.Text in English and Italian.

Dedicated to American artist Sandy Skogland, this book accompanies her first anthological exhibition at CAMERA in Turin, Italy. It retraces the entire path of the artist interweaving her biography with her professional progress, documented with the reproduction of her entire oeuvre. From the first photographic series produced in the mid-seventies to the great compositions of the early eighties, up until the brand new Winter, which the artist has been working on for over ten years: visionary and surreal works, which arise from the meticulous construction of a set that the artist then photographs, in a process that explains the rarefied production of the artist and the peculiarity of her visual path, merging installation, sculpture and photography.

Curator Germano Celant presents the largest exhibition in Europe of works by American artist, Richard Artschwager (1923-2013), commencing Italy, then in Spain.Turning to the understanding of space, everyday objects and perception, the poetics of Artschwager has established itself as a unicum in the art of the 20th century. His works deal with the representation of utilitarian instruments reproduced with industrial materials such as formica, celotex, acrylic painting, aluminum.To these fundamental aspects is added the attention to pure geometric form and pictorial illusionism,resulting in paintings and sculptures that suspend the categories of the image and objects in a limbo between the space they physically occupy, the usefulness they refer to and their artistic representation.Text in English and Italian.

This catalogue documents the first exhibition in the Middle East by KAWS (Brian Donnelly, born 1974, USA). The solo show explores his career and vast oeuvre and features paintingsand sculptures made over the past 20 years.KAWS' imagery has long possessed a sophisticated, dark humour, revealing the interplay between art and consumerism, referencing both art history and pop culture. Donnelly began his career in street art in the 1990s, becoming synonymous with the name KAWS, a tag that became a staple in his 'sub-vertisments' (modifications of commercial works).In additionto more than 40 major pieces exhibited in the Garage Gallery, examples of commercial collaborations designed by KAWS, among them sneakers, skateboards, and toys are on view in a separate archive above Café 999. Amassive 5-meter-tall sculpture, COMPANION (PASSING THROUGH) (2013), in the Fire Station courtyard and an inflatable 40-metre public artwork at the Dhow Harbour, HOLIDAY (2019), also serve to highlight the exhibition.

“For fifty years I’ve been practicing different kinds of writing: scripture: a theoretical one for essays, one for the production of books and catalogues, and one focused on the exhibitions. The story of (my) exhibitions aims to draw attention to this last kind of writing”. - Germano CelantThis book, which Germano Celant (Genoa, 1940 - Milan, 2020) had been working on for years, is published posthumously and represents the professional and spiritual testament of this well known and internationally respected curator.It tells the story of the exhibitions that characterised Celant’s work presenting, in chronological order, a selection of 34 exhibitions: from Arte povera - Im-spazio, Genoa, 1967, to Post Zang Tumb Tuuum: Art Life Politics - Italia 1918-1943, Milan, 2018, passing through Identité italienne - L’art en Italie depuis 1959, Paris, 1981; Futuro Presente Passato, 47 - Venice International Art Exhibition, 1997; When Attitudes Become Form - Bern 1969/Venice, 2013; and Arts & Foods. Rituals since 1851 - Milan, 2015. The books retraces the exhibitions through over 400 pictures of the actual displays and the critical texts that were published in the respective catalogues.Thus emerges the evolution in Celant’s curatorial practice, from personal interpretation to his focus on historical documents, with an eye always turned towards non-traditional media (book, record, photography) and towards the encroachments between different languages (art, architecture, design).Text in English and Italian.

A groundbreaking work edited by Germano Celant in collaboration with the artist and her New York studio that enriches our knowledge of Louise Bourgeois Louise Bourgeois, who has produced art since the 1930s, began in the 1990s to use her clothes and the clothes of her loved ones as components in her sculptures and drawings. It is as much a reincarnation of her past and her childhood as a confirmation of her relationship with memory. Her visual approach to fabrics transforms decorative accessories into emotional and personal references which, especially in her Cells and later in her drawings, create representations of a tormented and at the same time powerful womanhood. Further development of the artist’s work began in 2002: exploiting the iridescent colours and formal structural properties of pieces of her clothing, she created “The Fabric Drawings,” astonishing works alternating between floral figurative pieces and chromatic abstractions. This set of images is collected here in its entirety for the first time, constituting the closest thing yet to a general catalogue.

The sculptural journey of a 20th-century master whose career began in Venice in the mid-1930s. Emilio Vedova’s artistic career began in Venice in the mid-1930s. He immediately felt the deep allure of grand Venetian painting and sculpture and, guided by the restless agitation and dynamic mobility of the baroque, was soon plunged into total and extreme three-dimensional involvement. The Emilio Vedova Scultore work originates precisely from his feeling of being a living and breathing part of the beloved spaces he encountered along his way, inexhaustible sources of stimuli and incitement, which he transformed into volumetric works of sculpture, architecture, opera and theatre.

Published on the occasion of his major anthology at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice, this catalogue gathers a number of works by the renowned British artist. “A journey from the origins of life” that, according to the artist, through very powerful works celebrates “the awe and wonder of the world in which we live.” Marc Quinn began his career exploring issues such as the relation between art and science, the human body and its survival mechanisms, life and its preservation, beauty and death. Through an essay-interview of the artist with Germano Celant, the volume offers in-depth insight into Quinn’s conceptual practice that incorporates sculpture, painting and installations. The artist’s preoccupation with the metamorphic ability of both human life and nature points to his fascination with our innate spirituality. Quinn transforms the very act of seeing by forcing viewers to question what is around them, pushing them into the unknown in order to rediscover life.

Visual artist, choreographer, writer and director, Jan Fabre has been one of the most influential figures on the European scene for over twenty years. His provocative forays into all different art forms are aimed at breaking down the artistic and moral barriers of his times. Published on the occasion of the exhibition of Fabre’s works at the MAXXI in Rome, the monograph brings together, for the first time, the action art and performances of the Belgian artist from the 70s to the present: drawings, “thinking models”, collages, films, photos and other documentation that lay the groundwork for a rediscovery of dozens of Fabre’s performances and interventions, both public and private, held in Belgium and abroad. The extreme, even brazen exploration of the human body, which frequently scandalizes viewers, is linked to the idea of metamorphosis, which Fabre may have derived from that passion for the sciences he inherited from his great-grandfather, the esteemed entomologist Jean-Henri Fabre. Jan Fabre has devoted much of his career to studying the human body and its transfiguration, central themes in his work; the artist considers performance art a “per-for-a(c)tion” of the body with respect to the outer world: a way to explore its limits, actions and reactions, both inside and out.