Lida Abdul uses videos, installations and photographs to express her condition as a refugee and her constant feeling of precariousness. Her work shows us the devastating effects of the war on the Afghan people. In her works (videos, photographs, installations and performances), the artist highlights her indigenous cultural background both aesthetically and intellectually, comparing it with expressions of Western culture and art history. Using a language that is both realistic and symbolic, the artist depicts an Afghanistan tormented and destroyed by violent invasions and totalitarian regimes.

The book is published with the contribution of the Prince Claus Fund, the Campania Region and Galleria Giorgio Persano (Turin). It is the first comprehensive monograph on Lida Abdul, with a wide-ranging and detailed iconographic apparatus that illustrates the artist’s complete production.

Lida Abdul (Kabul, 1973) lived in Germany and India as a refugee before moving to the United States where she still lives. Awarded best foreign artist in the Afghanistan pavilion (first shown at the LI Venice Biennale in 2005), and the prestigious Prince Claus Award in 2006, she has exhibited her work at the Kunsthalle in Vienna, the Museum of Modern Art in Arnhem, the Netherlands, Central in Miami, the CAC Centre d’art Contemporain in Brétigny, the Frac Lorraine in Metz, France, and MoMA in New York. She has also participated in festivals in Mexico, Spain, Germany, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan. In 2006 and 2007 she participated in the Singapore, Gwanju, São Paulo, Gothenburg, Sharjah and Moscow Biennales.

“The interviews collected here – from the first, given in 1962, to the last, published after his death in 1987 – allow us to appreciate Warhol’s constancy and his ability to continue to play the part of a sort of Sphinx swearing it has no enigma to offer.” (Alain Cueff).

There is probably no cultural personality who has been interviewed as frequently as Andy Warhol. His figure was perennially associated with the media and wherever he went, the press followed him. As far as possible, this book presents Warhol in all his dimensions over the twenty-five years he was in the spotlight. There are pieces focusing on every area of his vast oeuvre and voracious life: Andy as painter, filmmaker, publisher, promoter, performer, printmaker, photographer, author and videographer; there are interviews that illustrate Andy’s views on other artists; the experience of going shopping with him; what his feelings were about New York; how he perceived his Catholicism. Although we have tried to maintain a certain chronological balance, more than half of the interviews date from the 1960s, considered the most important period of his life. No changes have been made to the interviews, nor have revised versions of the texts been included.

Original title: I’LL BE YOUR MIRROR. Selected Andy Warhol Interviews, 1962-1987 (edited by Kenneth Goldsmith), Carroll & Graf Publishers, New York 2004.

The book is published on the occasion of two exhibitions held at the Galleria Marabini in Bologna and at Centro Arti Visive Pescheria in Pesaro (26 October 2007-13 January 2008).

Candida Höfer is a German photographer, a former student of Bernd and Hilla Becher and specializing in large-format photographs of empty interiors and social spaces that capture the “psychology of social architecture”. In spite of the diversity of achitectural ideology and stylistic conventions, Hofer captures a singularity of the architects’ intent to represent a grand superstructure.

Candida Höfer’s photographs of libraries are sober and restrained – the atmosphere is disturbed by neither visitors nor users, especially as she forgoes any staging of the locations.

Candida Höfer was born in Eberswalde in 1944. She was a student at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art from 1973 to 1982, and studied film under Ole John before going on to study photography under the tutelage of Bernd Becher. Since 1975 she has taken part in numerous group exhibitions and held countless solo shows, and is now considered one of the greats of the current international photographic and art community.

The catalogue is published on the occasion of the exhibition INBETWEENESS held at San Michele former prison at Ripa (Rome) from 22 May to 15 June 2007. This exhibition wants to give you an idea of the situation experienced by recent generations of artists in the Balkan regions; we have called it Inbetweeness. This word represents a condition of perennial transit, an undefined identity in continuous movement from one place to another, in different time frames and different spaces, often in contradiction to each other. This ongoing condition of transience is something that the artists have experienced in person. It has prompted them to abandon their millenary traditions in order to embrace more modern forms of expression, such as the installation, photography, video, or the Net, all of which are instruments that can express pressing needs which could no longer be conveyed by the static nature of a painting or sculpture. The Balkans are a border region that has represented the meeting of East and West for centuries, all too often in the form of bloody conflicts. Today, in the era of globalisation, the Balkans actually stand for change and the definition of an ideal territory in which these two worlds can live in peace. For this reason the San Michele a Ripa former prison complex is the ideal venue for expressing this change. And so the works of the twenty-four exhibiting artists, symbolically placed inside the cells, form a melting pot of ideas, concepts, messages, and declarations that are able to annul the physical and symbolic confines of their space in order to create a new territory, one in which art can be freely expressed.

Essays are edited by Dobrila Denegri and Ludovico Pratesi.

Artists: Maja Bajeviç, Maja Beganoviç, Pavel Braila, Mircea Cantor e Gabriela Vanga, Nemanja Cvijanoviç, Nezaket Ekici, Nicu Ilfoveanu, Pravdoljub Ivanov, Šejla Kameriç, Daniela Kostova, David Maljkoviç, Ebru Özseçen, Adrian Paci, Tobijas Putrih, Anri Sala, son:DA, Miça Stajãiç, Erzen Shkololli, Jelena Tomaševiç, Slavica Toševska, Nikola Uzunovski, Vesna Vesiç, Natalija Vujoševiç

The series of catalogues published by hopefulmonster for GAM, continues with a monograph dedicated to the Italian artist Elisa Sighicelli for the exhibition held at GAM from March 15 to June 10 2007.
The catalogue, that tells deeply about the artistic personality of the artist through her works, opens with the photographic documentation of the exhibition to tell then through the images the art of Sighicelli from 1990’s up to today, showing light boxes and video projections.
Following a period of substantial observation of many of the variegated and composite effects that light can generate, the artist has recently chosen to investigate, in depth, the perceptive processes triggered by visual and luminous devices, both through moving images and photographic research. The scenarios are normally domestic situations, with an ordinary light. They tell of human presence through interior views, daily and earthy spaces. The attention placed on the possibilities, not only representative but rather experiential, offered by light and darkness, has led Sighicelli to direct her practice to scenarios that are increasingly aimed towards a more active role of the onlooker. 

Fondazione Merz in Turin from April 27th to July 29th, 2007. This book presents works since 1954, illustrating 300 drawings by Mario Merz. The majority of the artist’s sketches have never before been published and there has been little theoretical attempt to understand this crucial aspect of his career. For him, with the exception of writing, drawing was the only medium to accompany life, at home and on one’s travels, not only because it requires little in the way of materials and can be done anywhere and everywhere, but because drawing can match our mental and physical movements.

This book illustrates from the series of drawings on Objet cache-toi (Object, hide yourself) to the themes of the tables, cups and groups dedicated to the Giardino dei gufi (Garden of the owls), Semi floreali volanti (Flying flower seeds) and the Disegni di Sidney (Sydney drawings), as well as the large works depicting the prehistoric “terrible animals”.

The book includes an essay by Dieter Schwarz (Director of Kunstmuseum in Winterthur), Claire Gilman and a selected chronology by Lara Conte.