Wolfgang Tillmans’ “truth study centre” became a fixed part of his exhibitions since he first showed a version of the multi-part tabletop installation in 2005. Often arising from local circumstances and current issues at the time of their creation, the “truth study centre” works mark an endeavour to create a clear view in ever more confusing times.

Far exceeding his original and main medium of photography, he juxtaposes a variety of contrary opinions, statements and comparisons on recurring table formats. The dimensions of the wooden tables, which he designed himself, are not arbitrary: they are built using standard British door panels, 198 cm long, and with one of four different standard widths. This book gives an overview, through lavish reproductions, of this new form of collage, in which picture, text and object “are only kept in place by their own weight.” An essay by Thomas McDonough, Professor for Art History at Birmingham University, New York, places Tillmans’ project within the context of twentieth-century collage, from Hannah Höch to Robert Rauschenberg.

This comprehensive book on the work of the “capitalistic realist” KP Brehmer, who engaged with sociopolitical issues and tackled the visual media of the BRD and the conditions of capitalist image production and reception in a complex manner, is published on the occasion of what would have been his 80th birthday. He left behind a diverse, experimental, analytic and humorous oeuvre, which poses questions that are again becoming increasingly topical. In it he made use of image material from advertising and political propaganda in the form of posters, images from public television and from magazines and newspapers, which he presented in an altered context in the form of graphic art, paintings, printed editions, books or films. In collaboration with the artist’s estate and his former gallerist and collector René Block, the catalogue offers a multifaceted insight into work of KP Brehmer and facilitates a revaluation of the work.

This comprehensive book on the work of the “capitalistic realist” KP Brehmer, who engaged with sociopolitical issues and tackled the visual media of the BRD and the conditions of capitalist image production and reception in a complex manner, is published on the occasion of what would have been his 80th birthday. He left behind a diverse, experimental, analytic and humorous oeuvre, which poses questions that are again becoming increasingly topical. In it he made use of image material from advertising and political propaganda in the form of posters, images from public television and from magazines and newspapers, which he presented in an altered context in the form of graphic art, paintings, printed editions, books or films. In collaboration with the artist’s estate and his former gallerist and collector René Block, the catalogue offers a multifaceted insight into work of KP Brehmer and facilitates a revaluation of the work.

In his work, McCarthy explores the dialectical relationships between subjects like city and citizen, friend and the stranger, and present and past. McCarthy’s work often testifies to the paradoxical emptiness experienced in a metropolis. Taking the city’s map as a metaphysical topography, the confluence of real estate, architecture, and urban planning become vocabulary for the construction of a self. Besides working with photography and text, McCarthy makes associative installations. His works appear to be images from memories, meeting viewers with a torrent of different emotions, ranging from amusement and admiration to aversion and fear. Designed by Lucas Quigley.

More information on the associated exhibition can be found here.

Produced on the occasion of the comprehensive retrospective, Daniel Spoerri at Kunstforum Wien, 24 March – 27 June, 2021.

Daniel Spoerri is a Swiss artist and writer, best known for his “snare-pictures,” a type of assemblage or object art, in which he captures a group of objects, such as the remains of meals eaten by individuals, including the plates, silverware and glasses, all of which are fixed to the table or board, which is then displayed on a wall. He also is widely acclaimed for his book, Topographie Anécdotée* du Hasard (An Anecdoted Topography of Chance), a literary analog to his snare-pictures, in which he mapped all the objects located on his table at a particular moment, describing each with his personal recollections evoked by the object

Produced on the occasion of the exhibition Anna Oppermann – Künstler sein at Kunsthalle Bielefeld, 23 March – 28 July, 2019.

Anna Oppermann (1940–1993) is best known for her “ensembles”—expansive and complex assemblages of drawings, photographs, notes, and found objects that she developed, often over the course of years, in idiosyncratic creative processes. The fruits of an approach that was both intensely visual and tenaciously reflective, her ensembles are explicitly open works.