Lenz Press – förlag

The new shapes and sentiments that spill out from artist Shahryar Nashat’s artistic output of the last eight yearsBodies function, fight and fail. People bear witness to these processes every day, actively and passively, in the flesh and on-screen. But bodies are also unruly: they desire and shapeshift and betray. This oscillation between the realities of mortal progression and everything that transpires in those indeterminate zones serves as the basis for the visceral practice of Swiss artist Shahryar Nashat (born 1975).This monograph surveys Nashat’s artistic output of the last eight years. The book is copublished by Kunsthalle Basel and Swiss Institute, where Nashat had solo exhibitions. But, while the two exhibitions are the occasion for publishing this book, the contents here far surpass them: twelve of Nashat’s works made between 2012 and 2020 are examined across six essays and one conversation, each of which forges a new reading of what is at stake in the artist’s oeuvre.

The body as flexible habitat, from Arakawa and Gins to Lyle Ashton HarrisAustrian artist and curator Anna-Sophie Berger here assembles a group of works that register the body as a habitat that can be imaginatively stretched, altered, modified, adorned, replicated or destroyed. The starting point for Berger were two designs for necklaces by the Surrealist Meret Oppenheim—one resembling a baby’s legs wrapped around a neck, and the other featuring a pendant with a grinning toothy mouth smoking a cigarette, designed to hang at the softest part of the throat. In a similar spirit, each work in Life and Limbs was chosen for its ability to trouble the limits of what a body can become: from the metamorphosis that comes from wearing a garment to complete transfigurations into surreal, new beings. This volume includes works by Arakawa and Madeline Gins, Moyra Davey, CoBrA, Sarah Charlesworth, Lyle Ashton Harris, Rosemarie Trockel and more.