Lenz publishes books on contemporary art, photography, architecture and design.
Our imprint includes catalogues, monographs, theory and artist books.
Martin Heidegger, Glenn Gould, Jacques-Louis David, Cy Twombly, Paul Engelmann and Ludwig Wittgenstein: characters that Francesco Arena has chosen or rediscovered in multiple contexts over the time recur in this book. Ranging from philosophy, to music, to visual arts, they embrace the whole world of knowledge.
This first institutional monograph on the multimedia practice of artist and director Ali Cherri aims to highlight the themes and formal concerns running through his most recent, highly significant projects at GAMeC, Bergamo; Frac Bretagne, Rennes; Swiss Institute, New York; Biennale Arte 2022, Venice; and the National Gallery, London.
The book highlights the main characteristics of the collective trauma that gave rise to Rachel Whiteread’s project for GAMeC. The psychoanalysts Angelo Antonio Moroni and Pietro Roberto Goisis map out a composite picture, starting from the sense of vulnerability and collective loss associated with the Covid-19 pandemic.
This book, with follows the eponymous exhibition at Mudam Luxembourg, is constructed as a story, with a prologue, four acts, and an epilogue: an intuitive journey through the voices of thirty-four artists from different generations who are experimenting with the idea of the performative.
Dreaming Alcestis is an artist’s book by artist and filmmaker Beatrice Gibson, conceived as an accompaniment to her holographic film installation of the same name. It features a commissioned essay by poet and translator Allison Grimaldi Donahue, as well as a reprint of the American poet Alice Notley’s 1991 essay What Can Be Learned From Dreams?
What if clay is the future and the future is clay? Curators Chus Martínez and Filipa Ramos brought together a group of artists to think and create through this old, maleable and fascinating matter. The result was materialized in an exhibition and book format entitled Feet of Clay.
Edited by Béatrice Grenier
Texts by Philippe Azoury, Alenda Y. Chang, Béatrice Grenier, Ingrid Luquet-gad,
Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel
Co-published by Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain
Designed by Lorenzo Mason Studio
2024, English, 16.8 x 24 cm, 274 pages
ISBN 979-12-80579-66-9
The book is the first monograph of the work of Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel, published in conjunction with the release of the duo’s second feature-length film, titled Eat the Night . Formal experimentation characterises the work of emerging French film-making duo Poggi & Vinel, who employ the languages of video games, archives, and film-making to hybridise genres and break aesthetic conventions. There is ambiguity over the register within which the duo’s work should be situated: is it film, musical score, game or animation?
Edited by Béatrice Grenier, considered as an object the book is a formulation of an archive or a record of the duo’s work, encompassing the variety of mediums with which Poggi & Vinel engage, in addition to the overarching question of memory as explored in their practice. Three essays by Alenda Y. Chang, Béatrice Grenier and Ingrid Luquet-gad offer in-depth analyses of the ways in which the work of the duo constitutes a form of preservation through the use and reuse of video-game imagery. Identifying key works and turning points, the book provides a commentary on their particular, ambiguous positioning, somewhere between cinema-video and practice-gaming, and helps to explain why this positioning is critical vis-à-vis contemporary art today. In an interview with Philippe Azoury, the film-makers reflect on the role of community-building both within and outside their films, considering specifically the relationship between the digital characters and the ’real’ characters, and the importance of gaming in acknowledging and understanding other subjectivities.
Each film selected for the book is transformed into a photo essay, calling into question the nature of the image—the significance it has when moving or still. Spiral-bound, the book is punctuated by an infinity of potential covers: the object itself has no beginning or end. One can pick off where one left off, or enter the narrative at any point—a formal attempt to transcend the nature of the age-old medium.
Photos: Lorenzo Mason Studio