John Kelsey: Rich Texts: Selected Writing for Art (2010)

“Compiled for the first time here, the critic, artist, gallerist, dealer, translator John Kelsey’s selected essays gamesomely convey some of the most poignant challenges in the art world and in the many social roles it creates. “When the critic chooses to become a smuggler, a hack, a cook, or an artist,” Kelsey said at a 2007 conference at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main, “it’s maybe because criticism as such remains tied to an outmoded social relation.” It is precisely this relation that Kelsey intends to not only critique but also to surpass. In this way, Kelsey’s Rich Texts play the double role of explaining the art world and actively participating in it; they close the distance between the work of art and how we talk about it.

Originally published in Artforum—where Kelsey is a contributing editor—Texte zur Kunst, Parkett, and various artists’ catalogues, the essays compiled in Rich Texts have all been written over the last decade, and therefore embody a timeliness that strikes at the core of the contemporary art world and the crises that have come to define it.”

Edited by Daniel Birnbaum, Isabelle Graw, Institut für Kunstkritik, Frankfurt am Main
Publisher Sternberg Press, 2010
ISBN 1934105236, 9781934105238
245 pages

Commentary: Anon (Mute, 2014).

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Lisa Saltzman: Making Memory Matter: Strategies of Remembrance in Contemporary Art (2006)

“In an ancient account of painting’s origins, a woman traces the shadow of her departing lover on the wall in an act that anticipates future grief and commemoration. Lisa Saltzman shows here that nearly two thousand years after this story was first told, contemporary artists are returning to similar strategies of remembrance, ranging from vaudevillian silhouettes and sepulchral casts to incinerated architectures and ghostly processions.

Exploring these artists’ work, Saltzman demonstrates that their methods have now eclipsed painting and traditional sculpture as preeminent forms of visual representation. She pays particular attention to the groundbreaking art of Krzysztof Wodiczko, who is known for his projections of historical subjects; Kara Walker, who creates powerful silhouetted images of racial violence in American history; and Rachel Whiteread, whose work centers on making casts of empty interior spaces. Each of the artists Saltzman discusses is struggling with the roles that history and memory have come to play in an age when any historical statement is subject to question and doubt. In identifying this new and powerful movement, she provides a framework for understanding the art of our time.”

Publisher University of Chicago Press, 2006
ISBN 0226734080, 9780226734088
133 pages
via Jo Morfin

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Angelika Burtscher, Judith Wielander (eds.): Visible: Where Art Leaves Its Own Field and Becomes Visible as Part of Something Else (2010)

Visible is a research project in contemporary art that has been undertaken by Cittadellarte–Fondazione Pistoletto in collaboration with Fondazione Zegna. Visible reveals and invigorates artistic practices which have a real capacity for creating and experimenting with visions that can impact the social and cultural imagination of our contemporary world.

The first outcome of visible is a publishing project which has been developed in collaboration with nine curators to showcase 41 ways of making art. Ways that not only address topical contemporary issues, but also intervene directly to spark processes of change.

The visible editorial project focuses on artists who stand out for their capacity to deal proactively with the need to develop new economic models and to ensure the distribution of resources, the accessibility of information, the urgent need to rethink ecology and landscape issues, the potential of diversity, and the development and experimentation of participatory and democratic political models.

Artists: Alterazioni Video, Maria Thereza Alves, Aspra.mente, Patrick Bernier and Olive Martin, Anna Best, Francisco Camacho, CAMP, Santiago Cirugeda (Recetas Urbanas), Teddy Cruz, Neil Cummings & Marysia Lewandowska, Fadaiat, Cao Fei, Frente 3 de Fevereiro, Sou Fujimoto Architects, Goldin+Senneby, Gugulective, Zheng Guogu, Jeanne van Heeswijk, Paul Ramírez Jonas, Alon Levin, Goddy Leye, Jill Magid, Darius Miksys, Nástio Mosquito, Ciprian Muresan, Jesús Bubu Negrón, Offer and exchange, Progetto Diogene, Publink, Wanda Raimundi-Ortíz, Pedro Reyes, Anna Scalfi, Jonas Staal, Xu Tan, Javier Téllez, Tercerunquinto, Bert Theis, Ana Laura López de la Torre, Judi Werthein, Ming Wong, and Mlu Zondi

Publisher Sternberg Press, 2010
ISBN 1934105090, 9781934105092
380 pages

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