This volume is comprised of years of recent writing by the influential New York–based critic and curator Bob Nickas, widely considered one of the few independent voices still at work today. The 50 essays and interviews, written since 2007, are spread across five chapters, touching on encounters with artists from the 1960s to the ’80s to the present—among them, Jack Smith, Andy Warhol, Frank Stella, On Kawara, Isa Genzken, Steven Parrino, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kara Walker, Wolfgang Tillmans, Kelley Walker and Pierre Huyghe. Writing as if these figures were passing us by in present time, Nickas traces the disappearance of artists, architecture and culture in New York over three decades. As a way to keep the past in every sense present, his writing is always issued from his fictional “Dept. of Corrections.”
PUBLISHER Karma, New York
BOOK FORMAT Paperback, 6.5 x 9.125 in. / 416 pgs / 50 bw.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 2/23/2016 Out of stock indefinitely
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: SPRING 2016 p. 66
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9781942607199TRADE List Price: $25.00 CDN $34.50 GBP £22.00
Published by Aspen Art Press. Text by Bob Nickas, Katy Siegel, Heidi Zuckerman.
German artist Tomma Abts (born 1967) creates her paintings and drawings using a rigorous process that combines the rational with the intuitive. Starting with no external source material and no preconceived idea of the final result, Abts makes complex abstract compositions that ultimately take as their subject the process of their own creation. This publication accompanies her exhibition at the Aspen Art Museum, which is the first to survey the artist's extensive drawing practice. It features 41 works from 1996 to the present—many never before exhibited—and includes new works created specifically for the exhibition. The catalogue also features essays by Bob Nickas, Katy Siegel and Heidi Zuckerman.
Published by JRP|Ringier. Edited by Walead Beshty. Text by Nicolas Bourriaud, Suzanne Hudson, Bob Nickas.
This new expanded edition gives a ten-year overview of Los Angeles–based artist Walead Beshty (born 1976), and elucidates his approach to photographic and sculptural representation. Most recently, Beshty’s work has concentrated on themes of production, making use of mundane procedures like air travel or mailing a package.
Published by Snoeck Publishers. Text by Bob Nickas, William S. Smith.
Using an array of media, from found photography, gouache and charcoal on paper and silkscreen to assemblage and installation, acclaimed New York–based artist Adam Helms (born 1974) explores social and military conflict and the continuities between past and present instances of injustice. Helms draws heavily on found imagery (such as online images or photographs from library archives), frequently superimposing contemporary images and drawings upon them to establish both the eerie remoteness and the relevance of the past. This volume, the artist’s first monograph, consists of full-page color spreads of installation views and details of the artist’s oeuvre from 2007 to the present, as installed at institutions such as The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Sister, Los Angeles; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver; Grimm Gallery, Amsterdam and Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York.
PUBLISHER Snoeck Publishers
BOOK FORMAT Hardcover, 9.5 x 11.75 in. / 204 pgs / illustrated throughout.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 9/30/2013 Active
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: FALL 2013 p. 135
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9783864420313TRADE List Price: $55.00 CDN $72.50
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Published by Walther König, Köln. Foreword and introduction by Gregor Jansen. Text by Elodie Evers, Lars Bang Larsen, Alexander Koch, Bob Nickas.
This is the first comprehensive publication on the work of Chris Martin (born 1954), one of America’s finest contemporary abstract painters. Martin’s enormous, sunny canvases are enthusiastic in execution, heroic in scale while also expressing something of the rogue spirit of outsider art. Many of them are dedicated to such artists and musicians as Harry Smith, Frank Moore and James Brown, whose names are inscribed in coarse strokes upon the works. Martin’s paintings are underlain with such everyday detritus as stuck-on coins, vinyl records, banana skins, newspaper articles and slices of bread. Despite such rough, utterly profane surfaces, it is a spiritual tradition of abstraction that Martin’s work draws from: Native American folklore, religious mysticism, anthroposophist symbolism, the landscape painting of North American romanticism--and the great melting pot of New York City itself, where Martin has lived since 1975.
Published by J&L Books/Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris. Text by Bob Nickas.
Mixing and matching an abandoned Story Book Forest, historical Victory Gardens and a bar called Joe's, in this artist's book Amy O'Neill unfurls middle-American stories to create a feral landscape in which childhood memories rule. The project is designed by O'Neill for the Centre Culturel Suisse in Paris.
Published by Charta. Text by Jean-Pierre Criqui, Mario Diacono, et. al. Interview by Bob Nickas.
Barry X Ball's remakes of European late Baroque and Rococo sculptures update classical portraiture for our times. This catalogue presents some of his most significant marble portraits of art-world personalities and other series. Freely derived from historical sources, but with sly revisions and tweaks, these works explore the concept of an enduring and universal sculptural language.
PUBLISHER Charta
BOOK FORMAT Hardcover, 8.5 x 11.25 in. / 148 pgs / 67 color.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 9/30/2011 No longer our product
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: FALL 2011 p. 150
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9788881588121TRADE List Price: $49.95 CDN $60.00
Published by JRP|Ringier. Foreword by Jacob Fabricius, Ferran Barenblit. Text by Nicolas Bourriaud, Suzanne Hudson, Bob Nickas.
Moments spent in elevators, check-ins at airports, subway rides—these are all examples of the kind of “in-between” time that fascinates Walead Beshty and supplies so much of the material for his photographs. “In-between time” applies to civic space, too—depopulated modernist housing developments that sit precariously between evacuation and demolition (explored by Beshty in his Excursionist Views), plants, weeds and vegetation on isolated highway medians (Island Flora), or abandoned shopping malls (American Passages). More recently, Beshty’s adventures in “the in-between” have become a means of production, as he makes creative use of such mundane procedures as air travel or sending a package. This monograph presents a ten-year overview of Walead Beshty’s approach to photographic and sculptural representation, and contains newly commissioned essays by Suzanne Hudson and Nicolas Bourriaud, as well as a conversation between Bob Nickas and Beshty.
Works from the Collection of Martin and Rebecca Eisenberg
Published by Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College. Foreword by Tom Eccles. Text by Matthew Higgs, Bob Nickas, et al.
Martin and Rebecca Eisenberg have been collecting contemporary art for more than 25 years; their collection features major works by artists including Kai Althoff, Jeremy Deller, Peter Doig, David Hammons, Mary Heilmann and many others.
PUBLISHER Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College
BOOK FORMAT Clth, 9.75 x 12.25 in. / 168 pgs / 150 color.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 7/31/2010 Out of print
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: FALL 2010 p. 108
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9781936192076TRADE List Price: $40.00 CDN $50.00
Published by JRP|Ringier. Text by Bob Nickas, Christophe Cherix, Rainer M. Mason.
Francis Baudevin (born 1964) makes paintings from graphics designed for various products, primarily pharmaceuticals and album covers. He removes the type, leaving only the graphics, and enlarges the results onto canvases and walls, thereby retrieving geometric abstraction from its influence on commercial design.
Published by The Bookmakers. Edited by Luca Andriolo. Foreword by Norma Mangione. Text by Kathy Grayson, Bob Nickas, Lillian Davis, Mario Diacono.
Victorian women in masks, sheep dominating young boys, hooded figures popping out of the long grass, demented cherubs and aroused attack dogs are just some of the darkly humorous figures that populate the work of rising New York artist Kent Henrickson. Employing many media and techniques--including drawing, embroidery on linen, wallpaper and sculpture--Henrickson produces rich and crafty artworks that create peculiar psychosexual worlds while balancing classical references with a contemporary sensibility. "There is an absurdist quality attached to my imagery, as boys become cloaked or as hooded executioners or young girls dance and play with ghosts while they themselves are bound. At first glance these scenarios appear to be completely inappropriate and preposterous, but upon further scrutiny they can allude to psychological games and/or individual power struggles." This first monograph features paper changes, lots of full-bleed images and a host of excellent essays and interviews.
PUBLISHER The Bookmakers
BOOK FORMAT Clothbound, 8.25 x 10.25 in. / 288 pgs / 100 color / 58 bw.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 2/1/2008 Active
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: SPRING 2008 p. 150
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9788895702001TRADE List Price: $35.00 CDN $47.50 GBP £30.00
AVAILABILITY In stock
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Published by Paula Cooper Gallery, New York/Galerie Xippas, Paris. Text by Bob Nickas, Eric de Chassey, Stephen Ellis.
The New York Times' Roberta Smith described Dan Walsh's paintings thus: "The obvious historical precedents of these canvases include Minimal art's grids and stripes, Color Field painting's stained-canvas punch and Josef Albers' chromatic intelligence jazzed toward Op. But Mr. Walsh's fusion of them is surprisingly organic and present. It is grounded in a slightly muted though still vivid palette, a distinctive sense of proportion and a penchant for compositions--especially grids--built from large expanses, little squares, lines and stripes of layered, contrasting colors. Everything is softened by the vagaries of the hand... The result is choral. No element functions independently; each modulates the others. Mr. Walsh paints with a directness similar to Agnes Martin's, but gives himself more to do." Featuring more than 70 color reproductions of paintings and installation views demonstrating Walsh's at once programmatic and playful approach to abstract painting, this first comprehensive overview spans the last 15 years and includes contributions by Stephen Ellis, Eric de Chassey and Bob Nickas.
PUBLISHER Paula Cooper Gallery, New York/Galerie Xippas, Paris
BOOK FORMAT Hardback, 10.25 x 9.25 in. / 112 pgs / 73 color / 1 bw.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 7/1/2008 Out of stock indefinitely
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: FALL 2008 p. 124
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9780975392102TRADE List Price: $49.95 CDN $67.50 GBP £44.99
Published by Galleri Riis/P.S.1. Edited by Bob Nickas. Text by Bob Nickas.
Tom Sandberg’s photographs made a splash at New York’s P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in February of 2007. Though previously almost unknown to the American public, Sandberg, born in 1953, has quietly produced, over three decades, a superb oeuvre of austere, large-scale black-and-white photography. Focusing on a single object or person in each photograph, and steeping them in a murky, wintry light, Sandberg draws out soft tones and moody atmospheres from his subjects to create a pervasive complicity between them and the surrounding landscape. But he is an exacting image-maker too, and an involved one, insisting as he does on clarity amid darkness, and on the viewer’s emotional approach to his images. Co-designed by the artist, this beautifully-made catalogue--with essays by visionary curator Bob Nickas and P.S. 1’s Alanna Heiss--serves as an important primer on one of Norway's foremost practitioners of photography.
PUBLISHER Galleri Riis/P.S.1
BOOK FORMAT Hardback, 9 x 11 in. / 84 pgs / 40 bw.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 3/1/2008 Out of print
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: SPRING 2008 p. 190
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9788299727525TRADE List Price: $25.00 CDN $30.00
Published by JRP|Ringier. Edited by Lionel Bovier. Introduction by Bice Curiger. Text by Bob Nickas, Julien Fronsacq, Katia Garcia-Anton.
Though his works evoke 60s Op art, Swiss-born artist Philippe Decrauzat’s first reference is more likely to be the film Tron than Bridget Riley. Decrauzat works in a variety of media--wall painting, shaped canvases, sculpture, installations and works on paper, all of which evidence flat chromatics and complex geometric compositions. Stating, “I am not trying to build up a new theory about ideological issues regarding the historical content of abstraction. I am strongly involved in investigating the status of the image, in other words, indebted to practices trying to outline the critical tools developed by Conceptual and Op art,” Decrauzat clues us in to how his seemingly simple mix of appropriated imagery and techniques works. This is Decrauzat’s first monograph and includes an essay by critic and curator Bob Nickas.
Published by JRP|Ringier. Edited by Yves Aupetitallot, Anne Pontegnie. Text by Bob Nickas, Scott Rothkopf, Anne Pontegnie.
New York-based artist Kelley Walker hacks advertising and displays its inner workings as art. His large-scale prints appropriate iconic cultural images, digitally altering them to expose their underlying agendas. In “Black Star Press: Black Star, Star Press Star” (2004), Walker combined nondigital collage processes to reference abstract painting: He smeared newspaper photos of the Birmingham race riots with melted chocolate and toothpaste, scanned them into a computer and made photographic prints from the results. Such hybridized work is neither quite post-Pop nor just appropriation. In the past few years, Walker has emerged as one of the most innovative and rigorous young artists in New York and has become much in demand not only for his solo work but for his collaborations with fellow New Yorker Wade Guyton. This monograph is a valuable introduction to Walker’s technical processes, and essays by maverick critic and curator Bob Nickas and writer Scott Rothkopf lend much insight into his practice.
Theft is Vision gathers essays and interviews from the past ten years by the influential New York critic and curator Bob Nickas, offering a personal, shoot-from-the-hip take on the American art scene. More of a fan than a theorist, Nickas views art through a focused, subcultural lens; he pursues overlooked figures such as graphic designers Art Chantry and Jamie Reid, post-punk legends The Fall, cult artists Cady Noland and Steven Parrino; collaborates on photo/text pieces with Trisha Donnelly and John Miller; and offers a fictional conversation between Andy Warhol and On Kawara. Interviews with Philip Taaffe and Jeff Wall reflect on the 80s, while those with Wolfgang Tillmans (not previously published) and Kelley Walker bring us into the present. Since 1985, Nickas has organized over 60 exhibitions for galleries and museums as an independent curator. As Curatorial Advisor at P.S. 1 from 2003-2007, he organized more than 20 exhibitions, including Stephen Shore: American Surfaces, Wolfgang Tillmans: Fredom From The Known, William Gedney-Christopher Wool: Into the Night, Peter Hujar and the Lee Lozano retrospective, Drawn From Life. Nickas's book, Live Free or Die: Collected Writings 1985-1999 was published by Les Presses du réel in 2000, and Collection Diary, an account of his year-long project to "play" at being a collector, was published by JRP|Ringier in 2004.
Published by Matthew Marks Gallery/Fraenkel Gallery. Essay by Bob Nickas.
In the tradition of Brassaï's Paris at Night, Peter Hujar's Night brings together 43 hauntingly beautiful images of New York City. These pictures--most published here for the first time--illuminate a New York that has all but disappeared, one populated by the late-night demimonde, crumbling cobblestone streets, and landfills before the coming of Battery Park. Photographing costumed Halloween partygoers, dilapidated domestic interiors, cruisy city parks and trash-strewn parking lots, Hujar has left behind his own unique record of New York streets and their denizens, one as indelible as that of Weegee or Berenice Abbott. In a time before AIDS and a downtown before gentrification, Hujar's sometimes playful, often bleak photographs have an underlying sadness that is bound in the palpable mortality of his subjects, from revelers to decaying urban landscapes, all wrapped in a velvety blackness broken only by street lamps, fluorescent office windows and his camera's flash.
For one year, respected critic and curator Bob Nickas put his money where his eyes are: he decided to become a collector, someone who takes art off gallery walls instead of hanging it there. His ground rules dictated that he would buy one work per month from an artist he had never written about or exhibited before. In this fascinating diary of his year on the market, he tracks the changes in his relation to art, when the commitment becomes one of the wallet and not just the mind and words. “It has affected the way I look at art,” he writes. “On the one hand, if I am unwilling to part with my hard-earned money, how worthy can the art really be? On the other, there are certainly works far above my humble means... For this project, I have had to pay to have my say.”
Published by Swiss Institute/Christoph Merian Verlag. Edited by Marc-Olivier Wahler. Essays by Bob Nickas, David Deutsch, Seth Lloyd and Martin Tupper. Foreword by Dieter von Graffenried.
The inspiration for this book can be found in the question posed in its subtitle. Aiming to define a new way of grasping the concept of reality, Extra plays with the idea that it is never really grasped. In a new realm of gliding over, through and between the surfaces of reality, art takes on diverse forms to reveal the extreme elasticity of the real. 28 artists have come together to graft their layers onto reality pending its collapse such as Olaf Breuning, Wim Delvoye, Fischli & Weiss, Sylvie Fleury, Gelatin, Lori Hersberger, Christian Jankowski, Ugo Rondinone with John Giorno and Urs Fischer, Jim Shaw, Olav Westphalen and Erwin Wurm. Each artist has contributed an eight to ten page original visual essay. Collaborating in this drive to expose the depth and complexity of reality are critics, curators and physicists. David Deutsch and Seth Lloyd, quantum physicists, deliver a passionate round of “brain tennis” in their correspondence regarding the concept of multiple universes. The ephemeral texts of Martin Tupper appear throughout as nonsensical transmissions from another reality. Art critic Bob Nickas, along with several of the artists, round out and complete this multilayered collaboration.
PUBLISHER Swiss Institute/Christoph Merian Verlag
BOOK FORMAT Paperback, 6.25 x 8.25 in. / 440 pgs / 340 color / 45 bw.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 5/2/2003 Out of print
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: FALL 2003
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9781884692079TRADE List Price: $39.95 CDN $50.00
Tomma Abts: Mainly Drawings
Walead Beshty: Natural Histories
Adam Helms
Chris Martin: Staring into the Sun
Amy O’Neill: Forests, Gardens & Joe's
Barry X Ball: Portraits and Masterpieces
Walead Beshty: Natural Histories
At Home/Not at Home
Francis Baudevin: Miscellaneous Abstract
Kent Henricksen: A Season of Delight
Dan Walsh: Paintings
Tom Sandberg: Photographs 1989-2006
Philippe Decrauzat
Kelley Walker
Theft Is Vision
Peter Hujar: Night
Collection Diary
Extra: How Many Extra Layers Can We Graft Onto Reality Before It Collapses?
Performance Anxiety