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 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