Lenz publishes books on contemporary art, photography, architecture and design.
Our imprint includes catalogues, monographs, theory and artist books.
Catalog of the eponymous exhibition, held at the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève and curated by Andrea Bellini, this publication brings together a number of essays that explore the notion of metamorphosis from different perspectives. The catalog, like the exhibition, celebrates a world in constant transformation, where human nature is fluid and hybrid, open to change.
Ce catalogue de l’exposition éponyme, organisée au Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève sous la direction d’Andrea Bellini, rassemble plusieurs essais qui explorent la notion de métamorphose sous différentes perspectives. Le catalogue, comme l’exposition, célèbre un monde en constante transformation, où la nature humaine est fluide et hybride, ouverte au changement.
Fredrik Værslev: The Garden Paintings is the first publication dedicated solely to one specific body of work in the artist’s practice. It includes essays by Martha Kirszenbaum and Erlend Hammer, and gives a comprehensive and chronological account of the works from the series, showing their stylistic development as well as their exhibition history.
Between an artist’s book and a catalogue, this publication follows up on Armleder’s multidimensional exhibition at KANAL in 2020–21. Through archival pictures and in depth conversations, the book is designed to recreate the immersive experience of this collective experiment, and proposes a dive into something akin to a large self-portrait, conceived through the works of more than a hundred artists.
This artist’s book reflects Eva & Franco Mattes’ continued interest in the condition of displacement to be sensed in Fukushima. Borrowing the format of wrapping-paper catalogs, it contains twenty large pre-perforated sheets, each of which features a photographic texture—a seamlessly repeating motif captured by the camera amid the radioactive ruins of the contaminated towns and countryside.
The album brings together the music composed by Federico Chiari for various film and video works by Diego Marcon, including Monelle (2017), Ludwig (2018), The Parents’ Room (2021), and Dolle (2023). The album comes with a booklet containing lyrics and images that provide a deeper insight into this unique, profoundly intertwined collaboration between Chiari and Marcon.
Edited by Andrea Bellini
Texts by Andrea Bellini, Mathieu Copeland, Carla Demierre, Brian Droitcour, Karl Holmqvist, Kenneth Goldsmith and Quinn Latimer
Design by Robert Huber
2022, English, softcover, 178 pages, 16.9 x 22.4 cm
ISBN 979-12-80579-23-2
Five years after the exhibition From Concrete to Liquid to Spoken Worlds to the Word, and after a disastrous pandemic, the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève presents the catalogue for this complex, ambitious project. Even at such a remove, we thought it was important to retrace the fundamental stages of this event through critical essays, images of the works and installations, and the calendar of performances and poetry readings. The reason is simple: despite the undeniable weight of images in today’s world, a keen interest in writing — rather surprisingly — has recently become a hallmark of many young artists’ work. They use writing as a tool to understand the world and as the cornerstone of a critical method, analyzing the present and creating a performative, politically engaged language.
From Concrete to Liquid to Spoken Worlds to the Word explored the emancipation of language through historical and contemporary positions, from the earliest typographic and sound works of concrete poets to poetic experiments in the digital era. This diverse exhibition was accompanied by a series of readings, performances, and screenings revealing the porosity between art and poetry. Poetry readings and recitals in museums, performances centered on the importance of the text and its recitation, videos where poetic language takes on a role that rivals the visual component: the art of our time appears to be deeply and intimately rooted in words.
The program of the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, while tracing this link between word and image to the concrete poetry of the 1960s and ’70s, tried on the one hand to examine this renewed artistic interest in the word, and on the other to show how the web and social media are introducing new ways of making poetry. The underlying aim was to explore how art and poetry shape each other in an increasingly interconnected world through ongoing, rhapsodic communication.
