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.
This small anthology reviews some of the central themes of Diego Marcon’s research: from the role of the display in exhibitions to his relationship with cinema, from the use of special effects and animatronics to the sense of community established through his work. Glassa accompanies the exhibition of the same name designed by the artist for the spaces of the Centro per l’arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci in Prato.
Strata raccoglie 37 conversazioni con artisti il cui lavoro ha dato un contributo significativo alla scena artistica italiana e internazionale a partire dal 2000. Questo libro è il resoconto personale di una serie di incontri, amicizie e relazioni professionali che Vincenzo de Bellis e Alessandro Rabottini hanno coltivato negli ultimi vent’anni.
Strata compiles 37 conversations with artists whose work has made a significant contribution to the Italian and international art scene since 2000. This book is the personal account of a number of encounters, friendships, and professional relationships that Vincenzo de Bellis and Alessandro Rabottini have nurtured over the past twenty years.
Pardon Façade documents the artistic output of Luca Monterastelli, showcasing almost all of the sculptures and installations that he produced between 2011 and 2022. Across four chapters—corresponding to four solo shows that he staged in Milan, Otegem, Antwerp, and Naples—the publication provides the first overview of the artist’s work.
Edited by Edoardo Bonaspetti
Commissioning Editors: Maria Sica (director, IIC Tel Aviv) and Nicola Trezzi (director and curator,
CCA Tel Aviv-Yafo)
Design Lorenzo Mason Studio
2023, English, softcover, 21 x 30 cm, twenty 60 × 40 cm sheets of wrapping paper
ISBN: 979-12-80579-26-3
On March 11, 2011, the most powerful earthquake ever to hit Japan created a tsunami that laid waste to the country’s east coast, causing a catastrophic breach at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Since then, access to the contaminated towns and surrounding countryside has been mostly limited to scientists and specialized decontamination crews. The project Don’t Follow the Wind (2015–ongoing)—organized by the Tokyo-based art collective Chim↑Pom from Smappa!Group, together with Kenji Kubota, Jason Waite, and Eva & Franco Mattes—marked a historic exception: a group of artists entered the exclusion zone to produce a series of site-specific works. Installed in several venues on loan from former residents, these interventions comprise an exhibition that will remain unreachable in person for many years to come, until it will finally be deemed safe to return.
Fukushima Texture Pack is an artistic record of Eva & Franco Mattes’ engagement with this contaminated landscape. Borrowing the format of books of wrapping paper, it contains twenty large pre-perforated sheets. Each features a visual texture, a surface captured on camera amid radioactive ruins. All such patterns afford a seamless repeating motif, should they be installed in a tile formation as wallpaper. They comprise a representative sample of the 152 textures the artists first released online as freehold digital files. The pages of this book may be used freely to cover other books, decorate boxes, wrap gifts, form origami, or they may be framed as small works of art.
This artist’s book extends Eva & Franco Mattes’ interest in Fukushima’s geographical displacement. Following its radioactive ungrounding, this location is now most accessible through its representation. But images are given to obscuring the matter at hand—to wrapping it up, so to speak, in a reduced form. The tragic proportions of the Fukushima meltdown outstrip virtually all frames. With this in mind, how can one maintain awareness of this nuclear disaster? How might we live with the facts?
The textures—sampling walls and floors, rust, bricks, gravel, underbrush, tatami mats, dirt, desks, closets, and more—are unspectacular by design. Eschewing the gnarled automobiles, collapsed buildings, and other wrecks left in the wake of the tsunami, the visual banality of these posters speak to an invisible crisis. Additionally, their modular, tessellating design allows for the limitless spread of a given motif. As possible wallpaper, they evoke the new baselines of background radiation, omnipresent in and around the exclusion zone—a new surface condition.
The publication is supported by Istituto Italiano di Cultura Tel Aviv in collaboration with CCA Tel Aviv-Yafo.
