Bottled humanism, colored neon contaminations, tattered flaps of skin, and limp penises bring humanist self-assurance crashing to the ground. What appears as poison or chemical devastation is in fact an appeal to understand metamorphosis as a state of being. Over a period of three decades, from the mid-1950s to the late 1980s, the Japanese artist Tetsumi Kudo created a consistent body of work that serves as a model for contemporary conceptual approaches of Posthumanism and the New Materialism. The catalogue brings together contributions by artists and theorists and documents Kudo’s comprehensive oeuvre in work and archive images as well as exhibition views from the retrospective at the Fridericianum (2016).

The publication My Own Personal Bess, an artist’s book by Richard Hawkins is presented on the occasion of the current Forrest Bess exhibition. It is composed of collages, for which Hawkins combined reproductions of paintings by the visionary artist with selected text fragments and advertisements from the article “His Name Was Forrest Bess,” published in 1981 by Texas Monthly magazine. The book empathically approaches both the artistic work and biography of Bess, whom Hawkins discovered in his youth and considers to be a pioneering figure. Today Hawkins’s own work has likewise become an important point of reference for a younger generation of artists. 

The Fridericianum in Kassel and the Lafayette Anticipations Foundation in Paris are pleased to announce the publication of the catalogue Rachel Rose. The illustrated edition is published to accompany the first major solo exhibitions of the New York-born artist (1986) to be held in Germany (October 26, 2019 – January 12, 2020) and France (March 13 – September 13, 2020).

In recent years, Rachel Rose has quickly risen to prominence for her compelling video installations and films. In her work, the artist often explores how our relationship to landscape, storytelling and belief systems around mortality are inseparably linked to one other. Through multiple subject matter she questions what it is that makes us human and how we seek to alter and escape that designation.
The catalogue offers a complete overview of the artist’s work through well-founded text contributions and extensive documentation of her works.

With a text by Ron Nagle and a conversation between Massimiliano Gioni and the artist.

“Years later I rediscovered the photo booth at a novelty shop on 24th Street in San Francisco. I spent a lot of time there, taking dozens of pictures. Simultaneously, I began collecting random postcards from my favorite shop in North Beach. My photo shoots got more involved when I decided to merge the two elements. I would adjust my posture, pose, and attire to best accommodate the postcard. Sometimes it would take a hundred shots to get it right. By carefully selecting the proper combination of sticker and postcard, I was able to make a somewhat convincing tableau. These collages allowed me to insinuate myself into a scene from someone else’s experience.” (Ron Nagle)

The artist’s book is published on the occasion of the exhibitions:

Euphoric Recall
Fridericianum, Kassel
June 6 – September 8, 2019

Ron Nagle
Secession, Vienna
November 23, 2019 – February 9, 2020