Sara Greenberger Rafferty: Studio Visit


Book Description

A two-decade survey conceived as an inventory of materials This volume collects two decades of work by Brooklyn-based artist Sara Greenberger Rafferty (born 1978), known for her material transformation of photographs and use of comedy as artistic strategy. The book is organized by material sensibilities around paper, plastic, glass, metal, fabric scraps and "garbage." Studio Visitreconfigures the format of a monograph, sharing roughly 20 years of artwork through intimate studio documentation, sketches, notes and other ephemera. This chronology is punctuated by full-color case studies of major works in photography, sculpture and installation. With writings from Rafferty and image descriptions by art historian Kate Nesin, Studio Visitalso includes new writing by Kristan Kennedy and Oscar Bedford, as well as reprinted texts by Reverend Warren Debenham, media scholar Shannon Mattern and more. Studio Visitsurveys Sara Greenberger Rafferty's cultural commentary through dynamic and conceptually rigorous art.




Sara Greenberger Rafferty


Book Description

The boxing term "gloves off"--frequently used as a metaphor to characterize brutal political campaigns and post-9/11 military interrogation--aptly describes the subtle aggressions in American popular culture that Sara Greenberger Rafferty lays bare. Blurring the lines between two and three dimensions, Rafferty attaches her wall-mounted works using custom-painted screws that break up the images. She also deploys cracked paint resembling viscous bodily fluids, further "wounding" the objects. Over the past decade, Rafferty has referenced the language, gestures, and props associated with stand-up comedy. This exhibition includes a new large-scale work entitled "Jokes on You," featuring images of ephemera from the collections of the National Museum of American History, which was part of Rafferty's study during her Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship. Index cards from the Phyllis Diller "Gag File," scanned and recontextualized by Rafferty, underscore the trauma associated with cultural mores that assert control over women's bodies, such as marriage and consumerism.




Publishing as Practice


Book Description

On the work of three contemporary artist's-book publishers who have developed fresh ways of broaching politics in publishing This book documents Publishing as Practice, a residency at Ulises--a curatorial platform based in Philadelphia--that explores publishing as an incubator for new forms of editorial, curatorial and artistic practice. Over the course of two years, three publishers activated Ulises as an exhibition space and public programming hub, engaging the public through workshops, discussions and projects. Residents included Hardworking Goodlooking, the publishing arm of Philippines-based, social-practice platform The Office of Culture and Design; Dominica, an imprint run by Martine Syms dedicated to exploring Blackness as a topic, reference, marker and audience in visual culture; and Bidoun, a non-profit organization focused on art and culture from the Middle East and its diasporas. The book features a preface by David Senior, an essay by Gee Wesley and Ulises Carrión's 1975 publishing manifesto "The New Art of Making Books," alongside documentation of the works produced.




I Like Your Work


Book Description

The art world is now both socially professional and professionally social. Curators visit artists’ studios; collectors, dealers, and journalists assemble for a reception, exchange introductions and small talk; art is bought and sold; careers (and friendships) brighten or fade. In each situation, certain behaviors are expected while others are silently discouraged. Sometimes, what's appropriate in the real world would be catastrophic in the art world, and vice versa. Making these distinctions on the spot can be nerve-wracking and disastrous. So we asked ourselves: What is the place of etiquette in art? Since we don't have all the answers, we politely asked our friends for some help.







The Anxiety of Photography


Book Description

Through approximately forty works, The Anxiety of Photography examines the growing number of artists who embrace photography's plasticity and ability to exist in multiple contexts. Many of the works in this exhibition reflect powerfully on the changing nature of our relationship to the materiality of images, as artists produce photographic prints from hand-painted negatives, violently collide framed pictures, arrange photographs and objects in uncanny still lives, or otherwise destabilize the photographic object. Many of the artists included here employ an expanded collage aesthetic and have fully digested notions of appropriation. Throughout the exhibition, both the 'objecthood' and connectedness of images is felt strongly, whether expressed in front of the camera or in the presentation of the work itself. These investigations of the medium are furthered by a pervasive reinvestment in studio practice and an interweaving of personal content within the work.




Draw it with Your Eyes Closed


Book Description

"Draw It with Your Eyes Closed: the Art of the Art Assignment, is a unique and wide-ranging anthology featuring essays, drawings, and assignments from over 100 contributors including: John Baldessari, William Pope. L, Mira Schor, Rochelle Feinstein, Bob Nickas, Chris Kraus, Liam Gillick, Amy Sillman, James Benning, and Michelle Grabner. Practical and quixotic in equal parts, the art assignment can resemble a riddle as much as a recipe, and often sounds more like a haiku, or even a joke, than a clear directive. From introductory exercises in perspective drawing to graduate-level experiments in societal transformation, the assignment coalesces ideas about what art is, how it should be taught, and what larger purpose it might, or might not, serve. The book is a written record of an evolving oral tradition. Bringing together hundreds of assignments, anti-assignments, and artworks from both teachers and students from a broad range of institutions, Draw It with Your Eyes Closed serves as an archive and an instigation, a teaching tool and a question mark, a critique and a tribute."--Amazon.




Andrew Lyght


Book Description

Documents the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art's exhibition of work by Guyana-born contemporary artist Andrew Lyght and provides new scholarship contextualizing Lyght's work within the history and culture of Guyana and modern art.




Mediapedia


Book Description

If you’ve dabbled in digital photography but want to do more with your pictures, here is a comprehensive but nontechnical handbook that shows you how to take better photos and use your images more creatively. Mediapedia is a friendly, full-color resource that gives everyone an understanding of the creative power they’ve already got at hand, with the equipment they already own. Like an encyclopedia, Mediapedia is a classic desktop resource. Chapters on digital photography, image editing, type & layout, illustration, slide shows, and distribution are organized as a sequence of terms referring to the tools and techniques you can use to achieve particular effects. Author Kit Laybourne, an accomplished filmmaker and animator, describes scores of ways you can work with photos, fonts, Photoshop, Powerpoint, and illustration programs to enhance any personal media project—or create a new one. Laybourne writes in a friendly style that is as much about helping you figure out what looks good as it is about conveying the technical know-how you need. He includes more than 800 illustrations—photos, hand-drawn sketches, and screen grabs—that depict ideas for everything from improving your photography skills to cropping and altering pictures, creating entertaining slide shows, and adding illustration and type to cards and flyers. You’ll learn how to share your creative media in paper form as well as via the Internet. With Mediapedia in your library, you’ll have the tools, instruction, and inspiration to make your personal media projects creative and impressive. Creative tips and explanations include: Tools and techniques that are immediately usable by anyone who downloads photos onto a computer Terms, definitions, explanations, illustrations, and captions are all self-contained units, with related information on the same page Provides examples of good photography and design to help you take your own “personal media” projects to the next level Everything you’ve wanted to know about your digital photos but were afraid to ask




The World According to Colour


Book Description

'Extraordinary. An intellectual feast as well as a visual one' Edmund de Waal, author of The Hare with Amber Eyes The world comes to us in colour. But colour lives as much in our imaginations as it does in our surroundings, as this scintillating book reveals. Each chapter immerses the reader in a single colour, drawing together stories from the histories of art and humanity to illuminate the meanings it has been given over the eras and around the globe. Showing how artists, scientists, writers, philosophers, explorers and inventors have both shaped and been shaped by these wonderfully myriad meanings, James Fox reveals how, through colour, we can better understand their cultures, as well as our own. Each colour offers a fresh perspective on a different epoch, and together they form a vivid, exhilarating history of the world. 'We have projected our hopes, anxieties and obsessions onto colour for thousands of years,' Fox writes. 'The history of colour, therefore, is also a history of humanity.'