Pacific – förlag

In this issue we learn about memorial tattoos, lucky dæmons, surfing dogs, and top models (of the four-legged kind, of course). We read about the heartbreaking power of missing-pet posters and the brotherly bond between humans and working dogs. We meet purebreds and mutts alike, as well as a zestful husky named after a legendary rock band. We take a stroll in Prospect Park before travelling to San Francisco, a city with more dogs per capita than children. We meet an artist turning each dog walk into a creative opportunity, and a photographer cracking smiles with the help of peanut butter. We explore the weird and wonderful world of pet names and the meaning of Keith Haring’s iconic Barking Dog. All this, and more, inside the covers.

A visual primer on Philips’ graffiti-infused critiques of American culture, examining his material resources alongside his paintingsThis volume compiles Philadelphia-based Pat Phillips’ (born 1987) photography, sketchbook drawings and reference materials alongside artworks spanning the past 10 years of his career. With a foreword by Mario Ybarra and an interview with Mark Thomas Gibson, the book includes installation photos from the Whitney, M+B Gallery and his recent solo exhibition at Jeffrey Deitch Gallery. Historical graffiti, personal photos and the experience of growing up in Louisiana figure heavily in the artist’s work, visible here in collages and full-page spreads. Indeed, Phillips' paintings often combine personal and historical imagery in surreal juxtapositions, drawing on his experience living in the US to meditate on complex questions of race, class, labor and a militarized culture. Objects that suggest the violent underpinnings of this country and its institutions crop up frequently, such as confederate flags, fences and guns.

The art of Alake Shillings offers a colorful nostalgic romp through childhood iconographyIn the paintings and sculptures of Los Angeles–based artist Alake Shilling (born 1993), cutesy characters and plush creatures travel through a saturated world where disco and Lisa Frank aesthetics collide, often in a grassy knoll or ocean swell. Indeed, Shilling derives much inspiration from her childhood obsession with Frank and the design style of after-school crafts—imagery that connotes comfort and innocence. Unlike the works of Frank, however, Shilling’s painted characters contain imperfections, a sense of vulnerability and weariness that adults know all too well.In The Hippest Trip in America: By Land, Air and Sea, the artist’s works are paired with her source material, and texts by artists and writers Laura Owens, Kidogo Kennedy, Perwana Nazif and Grant Levy-Lucero are interspersed throughout. In a delightful nod to Frank, a sticker sheet insert is included on the back cover of the book.

Titled after a Zora Neale Hurston short story, E. Jane’s musical multimedia installation celebrates the Black divaBrooklyn–based multidisciplinary artist E. Jane (born 1990), author of the viral NOPE Manifesto (2016), explores the labor and inner lives of Black women while questioning the future of Blackness and queerness. This catalog grows out of Jane’s 2023 solo show at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and features recent work that considers the figure of the Black diva within contemporary and historical culture. Through video stills, performance shots and reproduced zine pages, this catalog serves as an entry point into Jane’s multilayered and expansive practice. An essay by Legacy Russell, originally published in Glitch Feminism, contextualizes Jane’s work within the spheres of Black, feminist and cyber theory. Additionally, new writing by Debra Lennard provides a framework for entering and understanding the artist’s latest work, and past interviews by Lumi Tan and Hannah Girma illuminate the artist’s biography and process.

An epistolary-style artist’s book offering meditations on womanhood and acts of creationLatvian–born, New York–based artist Ella Kruglyanskaya (born 1978) paints kinetic vignettes, often featuring exaggerated, nearly caricatured depictions of the female body. Kruglyanskaya’s practice intends to engage with the historical tropes of Western painting in regard to the female figure and to update these conventions.Too Much presents Kruglyanskaya’s latest series, created over the last four years. In some ways, the volume responds directly to the loneliness induced by Covid. The artist pens over a dozen letters to the reader, dispersing them among her paintings. Intimate, meditative and darkly humorous, the letters grapple with themes such as the depiction of gender and motherhood, the process of artistic output and the act of writing itself. A text by essayist Alissa Bennett—author of the zine Dead Is Better and cohost of The C-Word podcast with Lena Dunham—offers an entryway into Kruglyanskaya’s graphic figures and expertly rendered still lifes.

A richly illustrated guide to the somatic, conceptual and conversational practice of the underrecognized artist duoSince their first encounter on the telephone in Los Angeles in 1977, artists Maren Hassinger (born 1947) and Senga Nengudi (born 1943) have formed an expansive body of collaborations, and a lifelong friendship that spans nearly five decades. While maintaining rigorous solo practices rooted in sculpture and installation, the artists first connected through a shared language of movement. Together they produced suites of dances and performances, and later videos, artist books and conceptual correspondences that vitalized their artistic practices.The artists’ early work in Los Angeles emerged within a milieu that included David Hammons, Franklin Parker, Houston Conwill, and Ulysses Jenkins, and the loose collective of Black artists known as Studio Z. Yet since the mid-’80s, following their respective departures from the city, the two women have lived on opposite sides of the country, keeping their connection alive through a long-distance exchange. Created through an ethos of experimentation and support, Las Vegas Ikebana explores the longevity and transformative nature of the artists’ collaborations as they evolved across decades, geographies and media.Published in conjunction with the first-ever exhibition on the artists’ shared practice, Las Vegas Ikebana: Maren Hassinger and Senga Nengudi is the first monograph to survey the work of the pioneering duo. Richly illustrated, the publication assembles a plethora of never-before or rarely seen artworks and ephemera alongside images of the exhibition and a new performance titled See-See Riders, choreographed by Nengudi. Newly commissioned essays by critics, curators and artists trace the performative and conceptual working method of the two artists in distinct historical periods. The book includes a never-before-published 1987 conversation between Hassinger and Nengudi; an extensive oral history between the artists and their longstanding supporters, curators Lowery Stokes Sims and Leslie King Hammond; and original essays by the volume’s editor and exhibition curator Allie Tepper, critics Kemi Adeyemi and Sampada Aranke and artist Steffani Jemison—all of whom expand upon the artists’ crucial system of support that persisted in periods of institutional neglect. A complete annotated chronology of the artists’ collaborations, as well as exhibition histories, also accompany the book.

A powerhouse survey of work from today’s most celebrated Black women artists Black women artists have historically faced marginalization and underrepresentation within the art world. Despite these obstacles, they have persevered and crafted an artistry that encompasses a diverse range of themes, mediums and styles. At times, their creative endeavors confront the intersectionality of race, gender and identity, reflecting personal experiences, heritage and the realities of being a Black woman.To celebrate the Harvey B. Gantt Center’s 50th anniversary, A Superlative Palette brings together the work of more than a dozen generation-defining contemporary Black women artists from around the world. Their powerful and thought-provoking work has not only redefined artistic expression but has also played a significant role in advocating for social justice, equality and empowerment.Artists include: Nina Chanel Abney, ruby onyinyechi amanze, Lauren Halsey, Rachel Jones, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Jennifer Packer, Calida Rawles, Deborah Roberts, Tschabalala Self, Amy Sherald, Mickalene Thomas, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.

Neither a Salt Spring Nor a Horse documents a series of paintings, Poseidon Paintings, and two series of photographs by the artist Nick Waplington. Olive Trees (2013) was taken in “no man’s land” between the Jewish settlement of Har Homa, south of Jerusalem, and the Palestinian city of Bethlehem, a few hundred metres away. The second series, Athena 1 to 9 (2012), were taken while Waplington was out walking in the mountains in the northern West Bank. The women in the photographs are students at a midrasha, or Jewish religious boarding school, in the settlement of Shvut Rachel.

Aluquerque's expressive sculptural self-portraits are freighted with eroticism, mythology and posthumanismThis volume documents a new series of sculptures by Los Angeles–based artist Isabelle Albuquerque (born 1981), presented as a complete set of 10 for the first time in an exhibition at Jeffrey Deitch in 2022–23. These works, an expressive and erotic form of self-portraiture based on the artist’s own body, rendered in materials ranging from fur, bronze and walnut to resin and rubber (with found materials such as a candle or a saxophone), combine intimate memories with history, mythology and posthumanist and feminist theories.Each chapter of Orgy for Ten People in One Body corresponds to one of the 10 sculptures with a palimpsest of reference images, process photos and installation views. The publication includes two conversations with Albuquerque, with Arthur Jafa and with Miranda July.

A catalog–cum–genealogical record introduces the clay works of Rose B. Simpson, who derives inspiration from matrilineal traditionsThis gorgeously produced monograph presents the work of the New Mexico–based mixed-media artist Rose B. Simpson (born 1983). Informed by three maternal generations of ceramicists, Simpson creates androgynous clay figures that tackle the emotional and existential impacts of living in a postmodern and postcolonial world. The volume explores Simpson’s artistic evolution and examines the influence of Indigenous ceramic traditions passed down by her mother, Roxanne Swentzell, her grandmother, Rina Swentzell, and her great-grandmother, Gia Rose Naranjo. Weaving together object plates, family photographs and installation images, the hardcover publication features a coated fabric casing and Swiss binding. Creative writing by Simpson and essays by her relatives are accompanied by scholarly texts from Arden Sherman, Pamela Solares, Beata Tsosie-Pena and Ghislain d’Humières.