Lenz publishes books on contemporary art, photography, architecture and design.
Our imprint includes catalogues, monographs, theory and artist books.
Published in conjunction with a solo exhibition at Kunst Museum Winterthur, this book provides the first overview of Altmann’s work to date, characterized by a strongly socio-critical consciousness, and reveals the artist’s influences and inspirations.
The first monograph dedicated to Paloma Bosquê addresses the Brazilian artist’s ways of understanding and giving shape to that matter which can be perceived, but not rationalized.
The first book on London based artist Gili Tal, whose practice identifies how the digital has long become a reality that has subjected our habits of perception to a radical change.
Through comprehensive and interdisciplinary readings of landscape, cinema, architecture, and visual culture, this first monograph builds on the storytelling dimensions that have always informed the photographic oeuvre of the Syrian artist.
The book is the outcome of an exhibition around the theme of the sacred. The resumption of historical figures, classical art-historical iconography, and everyday images intermingle in a reconstruction of reality that is dreamlike, painful, and sometimes grotesque.
Vogliamo tutto. Cultural Practices and Labor is a publication on work within a changing socio-cultural context: from the impact of the Industrial Revolution to post-industrial decline through to the rapid evolution of the digital era.
Edited by Andrea Bellini
Texts by Andrea Bellini, Lorraine Mendes, Antonio Obá, Larry Ossei-Mensah
Designed by Lorenzo Mason Studio
2025, English, hardcover, 24 x 30 cm, 224 pages
ISBN 979-12-80579-74-4
Antonio Obá: Rituals of Care traces the practice of the Brazilian artist from 2016 to the present, offering a broad survey of his recent work, dwelling on the recurring motifs and iconographic sources that feed the complex imagery of his painting. Extensively illustrated, the book returns the richness of Obá’s paintings, with enlargements on some of the details woven into the pictorial texture that, in addition to showing his masterful technique, make certain elements of his visual vocabulary stand out.
The conversation between Andrea Bellini and Antonio Obá that opens the book offers the opportunity to learn, through the artist’s voice, about the key passages of his research, and to examine his diverse cultural references—from the Baroque of Minas Gerais to traditional Chinese painting, from Rembrandt to the Catholic ex-votos—until we discover the Obá’s civic vocation, of painting as a spiritual practice.
The two essays commissioned for the occasion analyze the complexity of these layered signifiers. Lorraine Mendes’s essay “Every Boy Is a King” offers an in-depth analysis of Obá’s religious syncretism. It suggests an interpretation of its layered symbols, particularly the sankofa and the deity Exú, both of which pay tribute to the artist’s West African roots. Above and beyond the specific cultural contexts of this iconography, the author emphasizes the universal value of Obá’s work, its evocative, transformative, dynamic power, which—like music or dance—knows no national boundaries or barriers.
Larry Ossei-Mensah’s essay “Embodiment: The Art of Antonio Obá” investigates the complex cultural legacy that is intertwined with the artist’s practice, connected to his Afro-Brazilian roots, to the social and political realities of the Black diaspora, and to Christian, Candomblé, and Umbanda traditions. In addition to examining the context in which Obá’s work is rooted, the author situates it within a galaxy of artists who have focused on questions of identity, often using their own bodies as tools of social and cultural critique.
Completing the book is a chronology, compiled by Sara De Chiara, tracing the artist’s formative years and exhibition history, accompanied by rich documentary materials.
The book is published on the occasion of Antonio Obá: Rituals of Care, the first mid-career survey in Europe dedicated to the Brazilian artist, curated by Andrea Bellini, at the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève.
Photos: Nicola Gnesi