Lenz publishes books on contemporary art, photography, architecture and design.
Our imprint includes catalogues, monographs, theory and artist books.
The artist’s book to love and devour by Tolia Astakhishvili was published on the occasion of the inaugural exhibition at the new site of the Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation in Venice, curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist.
This monograph, published on the occasion of Samson Young’s exhibition at SFMOMA, focuses on his latest project, Intentness and Songs, a multimedia installation that poetically traces the idiosyncratic rhythms of love, memory, experiences of time, and AI. Essays and a rich set of unpublished materials offer new keys to understanding the artist’s work.
The book, published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition held at CAM – Gulbenkian in Lisbon, explores convergences in the work of Paula Rego (Lisbon, 1935 – London, 2022) and Adriana Varejão (Rio de Janeiro, 1964), although they belong to different generations and come from different backgrounds.
O livro, lançado por ocasião da exposição homónima no CAM – Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian, em Lisboa, explora as convergências nas obras de Paula Rego (Lisboa, 1935 – Londres, 2022) e Adriana Varejão (Rio de Janeiro, 1964), apesar de pertencerem a gerações e contextos distintos.
The future of architecture lies in the curatorial approach. This is the thesis put forward by architect Wilfried Kuehn and theorist Dubravka Sekulić in their book, which brings together contributions from more than 30 authors working in the fields of architecture, art, and curatorial knowledge and practice.
Emanuele Coccia describes the radical creative freedom inscribed in Ernesto Neto’s practice, analyzing the workings of the Brazilian artist’s pieces of living architecture. Art on Earth is the third book in a series of short essay collections inspired by the site-specific projects conceived for GAMeC at Palazzo della Ragione.
Edited by Edoardo Bonaspetti, Erlend Hammer and Fredrik Værslev
Texts by Erlend Hammer and Martha Kirszenbaum
Design Lorenzo Mason Studio
2023, English, softcover, 23.5 x 33.5 cm, 184 pages
ISBN 979-12-80579-34-8
Fredrik Værslev: The Garden Paintings is the first publication dedicated to a single body of work by the artist. As Erlend Hammer writes in his essay: “The Garden Paintings are works that exist within a complex network of references that include everything from Abstract Expressionism to suburban garden furniture as one might find in an event organized as a platform for relational aesthetics. They similarly engage, art-historically speaking, with everything from the anthropological site specificity of Robert Smithson’s relics, the theatricality of Minimal sculpture, architecturally loaded carriers of institutional critique, and post-conceptual painting objects. At the same time, they’re also just paintings.”
In her essay, Martha Kirszenbaum points to the origin of the work in the suburban architecture of Norway in the 1980s: “His Garden Paintings are as much a homage as a misuse and a detournement of the wooden decks that formed the environment of his upbringing. Each work is based on an appropriation of wooden pallets, always seemingly the same size and comprised of seven or eight slats. The repetition of structure and material seems to echo the monotony of suburban life, while the various color palettes he uses refer to Norwegian housepaint.”
The publication gives a comprehensive and chronological account of the Garden Paintings as well as their exhibition history. It thereby shows both the stylistic development of the individual works and the various ways Værslev has presented them since he first began the series in 2011.
The book is published in conjunction with the exhibition Platting held at Haugar Art Museum (2023) and curated by Erlend Hammer. The works from the series have been also exhibited in institutions such as the Astrup Fearnley Museet in Oslo, Moderna Museet in Stockholm, The Power Station in Dallas, Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen and Bonner Kunstverein in Bonn.
Photo Nicola Gnesi