Book of the day > Ron Jude – Nausea. Published by MACK (@mack_books). “Nausea—taken from the title of Sartre’s 1938 existential novel—is a body of photographs that registers the interiors of public schools in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Atlanta, Georgia from 1990-92 by American photographer Ron Jude. Departing from mere documentation, however, Jude lures us into peering through windows, doorways and crevices of walls into empty classrooms and corridors, as we become increasingly conscious of the perils of our own gaze. Rousing, rather than abating, the uncertainty of looking, Nausea established the building blocks for the next twenty-five years of Jude’s photographic output, including Other Nature, Alpine Star, Lick Creek Line and Lago.

At the heart of Nausea lies the premise that philosophical inquiry might be filtered and consumed through photographs, just as it is filtered through Sartre’s work of literary fiction. Taking as his subject the banality of institutional learning, the monotonous spaces and objects captured in Nausea serve as a platform for exploring the nexus between the narrative limitations of photography and consciousness. Employing a distinctive visual language, marked by an acute sense of colour, radical framing and shallow focus, Jude created a world both familiar and uncanny, imbued with a pervasive sense of unease.

To mark the 25th anniversary of the inaugural exhibition of Nausea in 1992 at The Photographers’ Gallery in London, Jude has made an entirely new edit of this work. Many of the photographs in this volume have never before been published or exhibited.”

LA Forum is proud to join with Arcana: Books on the Arts in hosting a publication launch for local design and architecture office SO-IL, who are presenting their first monograph, "solid objectives: order, edge, aura" 

Featuring a collection of built and unbuilt projects, texts, processes and experiments from the firm’s first eight years of work (2008-2016), the book proposes an architecture that requires interpretation. The publication is at once a visual and textual manifesto that introduces an attitude towards the design and realization of architecture in an interconnected environment. 

The event will feature SO-IL's Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu in discussion with Johnston Marklee's Mark Lee.
 

Book of the day > Ashley Hicks: Details. Published by IDEA Books @idea.ltd “Hicks' zooms in on the architectural and decorative details of great British and European houses. The results of this historic snoop around are juxtaposed with his own highly creative and idiosyncratic interiors." "Details by Ashley Hicks is a new interiors book that presents an annotated photographic insight into great historic homes and buildings. Much of the photography was taken by Hicks himself, almost half on his phone, capturing fragments of his own work besides historic interiors, with a focus on the key intersection of materials which Hicks sees as ’the most telling moment of design.’ Properties included are Sir John Soane’s Museum, Montacute House in Somerset, Holkham Hall in Norfolk and Hicks' own rooms at Albany, the exclusive residences hidden between Piccadilly and Savile Row. Limited edition of 500 copies.” @ashleyhicks1970

Book of the day > Nick Cave: Until. Published by Prestel. "This generously illustrated book takes readers inside Nick Cave’s newest work: an enormous, elaborate journey through the workings of the artistic mind. Nick Cave’s “Soundsuits”―exuberant, brightly colored wearable sculptures adorned with buttons, hair, toys and other found objects―have made him one of the best-known contemporary artists. This book documents his most extensive work to date, turning his art inside out. Until fills MASS MoCA’s football field- sized gallery, without a single Soundsuit to be found. Instead Cave takes us inside the belly of one of his iconic sculptures with an immersive environment populated by a dazzling array of found objects, echoing some of Cave’s and America’s most confounding dilemmas: gun violence, racial inequality, injustice within our cities’ police departments, and death. An installation diary and numerous images reveal how an idea becomes reality. Until also incorporates special appearances by dancers, singer/ songwriters, and poets, as well as community forums, and opportunities for public debate and engagement. Transcripts of the first of these events accompany the book’s illustrations. This book features an essay by exhibition Curator Denise Markonish, commentary by David Byrne and Lori E. Lightfoot that contextualizes Cave’s work against today’s headlines, and an excerpt from Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric. Powerful and transformative, Until promises to take its place among the era’s most important artistic statements."

Book of the day > Encyclopedia of Flowers, Vol. 3. Published by Seigensha. “Makoto Azuma and Shunsuke Shiinoki collaborate once again to further their pioneering ‘Encyclopedia of Flowers’ series, which focuses in part on changes that impact floristry, such as the disappearance and new emergence of species, as well as on changing the common perception of flowers. Following the first volume in 2011 and the second in 2015, this third dazzling instalment features a greater variety of styles, reflected in photographs divided into seven chapter-categories that include ‘Coexistence’, ‘Hybrid’, ‘Chiaroscuro’, and ‘Autogenesis’. The myriad arrangements done in Azuma’s singular style are expertly captured by Shiinoki’s camera.”

UPCOMING EVENTS AT ARCANA!

Stay tuned for details or sign up for our e-mailing list.

Sunday June 18th, 4:00 to 6:00 PM
DAN HICKS: I SCARE MYSELF - A MEMOIR
BOOK SIGNING AND PANEL
MODERATED BY KRISTINE McKENNA 
with VAN DYKE PARKS, MARIA MULDAUR, JIM KWESKIN, 
AND HOT LICKS GUITARIST PAUL ROBINSON!

Saturday, June 24th, 4:00 to 6:00 PM
BARRY AND BARBARA SHAFFER: ECHOES OF BHUTAN

Book of the day > Mike Kelley: Memory Ware: A Survey. Published by Hauser + Wirth. “Over the course of his four-decade career, Mike Kelley (1954–2012) critically questioned aesthetic conventions and examined all forms of culture. The approximately 100 Memory Ware and associated works were made during the first decade of the 21st century; all are reproduced in this catalog. Named for a genre of North American folk art in which everyday utilitarian objects such as vases are coated with a claylike substance and then embedded with small objects including shells, beads and buttons, Kelley’s Memory Ware series consists both of wall-hung works (known as Memory Ware Flats) and freestanding pieces. The artist’s appropriation of this folk tradition eliminates recognizable underlying objects and expands the original method to include a wider variety of keepsakes. The Memory Ware sculptures, by contrast, juxtapose dense clusters of found objects with minimally or undecorated areas and reintroduce an overall structure.” 

Join Us Sunday, May 14th, 4:00 to 6:00 PM for 

HAROLD BRONSON: MY BRITISH INVASION

Harold Bronson grew up in Los Angeles as a passionate Anglophile. Through his career first as a music journalist, then as a label executive, Harold met and befriended many of those performers whose music he loved. With his newly released My British Invasion from Rare Bird Books, Harold pens his insider's account of London's cultural youthquake of the sixties and seventies that brought us The Yardbirds, The Dave Clark Five, Manfred Mann, Herman's Hermits, The Hollies, The Kinks, The Troggs, The Zombies, Johnny Rotten, Pirate Radio, and much, much more. A co-founder of the legendary Rhino Records label, Harold is the author of Rock Explosion: The British Invasion of America in Photos 1962-67, Hey, Hey, We’re The Monkees, and The Rhino Records Story: Revenge of the Music Nerds.

Come to Arcana Sunday, May 14th between 4:00 and 6:00 PM to meet and reminisce with Harold Bronson, twist and shout, and dine on humanely raised, grass-fed hot dogs from our friends “Let’s Be Frank”. If you cannot attend but would like to purchase a signed copy of My British Invasion please click here or call us at 310-458-1499.

Book of the day > Lauren Greenfield: Generation Wealth. Published by Phaidon.  A stunning – and massive – book: “Lauren Greenfield: Generation Wealth is both a retrospective and an investigation into the subject of wealth over the last twenty-five years. Greenfield has traveled the world - from Los Angeles to Moscow, Dubai to China - bearing witness to the global boom-and-bust economy and documenting its complicated consequences. Provoking serious reflection, this book is not about the rich, but about the desire to be wealthy, at any cost.”