Please join us for these great book signings at Arcana: Books on the Arts!
Saturday, November 7th, 4:00 - 6:00 PM
MARCIA PRENTICE: HOW WE LIVE
Saturday, November 14th, 4:00 - 6:00 PM
JONA FRANK: THE MODERN KIDS
Saturday, November 21st, 4:00 - 6:00 PM
CHARLOTTE COTTON: PHOTOGRAPHY IS MAGIC
COMING SOON:
SAM JONES + BLAKE MILLS: SOME WHERE ELSE
MICHAEL DWECK: THE END - NEW EDITION
Stay tuned for details or sign up for our e-mailing list here.
Book of the day > Kevin Harry: KH Issue 2. @mrkevinharry. Just in: Kevin Harry’s highly anticipated second issue of his fabulous eponymous ‘zine! This time featuring portraits from the 2014 Afro Punk Festival in Brooklyn. “I wanted to create a zine of portraits that celebrate people of color…our beauty, diversity, strength, style...our vibration. I have found that the people I photograph really appreciate being acknowledged, they appreciate being seen. Often, people will embrace me after I take their picture...saying ‘thank you’! What I really try to capture is a ‘come as you are’ spirit…My aim is to honor the people I'm photographing and to uplift the culture.”
Book of the day and Book Signing/Discussion/Reception tomorrow (Saturday, 9/12, 4-6)! Join us, please! > Thomas Demand: The Dailies. MACK. “Working within the parameters of his established technique, Thomas Demand created carefully formed paper and card sculptures, a parallel world which is photographed and then destroyed. The Dailies offers only traces – signs of consumption, or the spectres of things left behind. His creations are based on things he saw and photographs he took while travelling and walking the street. They show a world that is familiar but out of reach, like the dancing coloured pins on a clothesline, suspended somewhere between the overfamiliar and the hallucinatory – as if a chance apparition, glimpsed momentarily, before it vanishes into its habitat.
The images lure the viewer into a mirror world, a twin universe made only of paper. But the imperfect models are awash with discrepancies from actual things, and as such, they act as small ruptures that complicate the old indexical bond between a photograph and reality. Demand describes the series as Haiku poetry, simple fragments strung together to inspire reflection; they are the stock of our daily lives, but as they trigger deja vu through performed repetition, they ask us to look again, anew, to find in the repertoire an ordinary but redemptive beauty.”
"Working within the parameters of his established practice, Thomas Demand creates carefully formed paper and card sculptures, a parallel world which is photographed and then destroyed. In contrast to his usual practice of depicting scenes that are typically culled from news media, Demand created The Dailies by sourcing his personal cell phone photographs. These commonplace scenes portray anonymous, everyday moments, like a cup placed in a chain-link fence, or a plant seen behind a frosted glass window. They show a world that is familiar but out of reach, like the dancing colored pins on a clothesline, suspended somewhere between the overfamiliar and the hallucinatory - as if a chance apparition glimpsed momentarily, before it vanishes into its habitat".
In conjunction with the release of MACK Books' brand-new, complete edition of The Dailies, Thomas Demand will be discussing the series along with his career and working methods with noted Los Angeles-based curator, author, and professor Russell Ferguson, who has included the artist's images in his "Perfect Likeness: Photography and Composition" exhibition currently at The Hammer.
This presentation will held in the Helms Bakery Design Atrium at 8745 Washington Boulevard - 500 feet west of Arcana - at 4:15 sharp to be followed by a book signing and reception at the shop hosted by the Photographic Arts Council / Los Angeles.
Culver City is the place to be this coming Saturday to celebrate the spate of Fall gallery exhibitions, and our event with Messrs. Demand and Ferguson!
As we're expecting a healthy turnout, we would appreciate your RSVP for our planning purposes by kindly emailing rsvp@paclosangeles.com to let us know you'll be there.
If you cannot attend but would like to purchase a signed book, please place an order here. Quantities are limited, so only one of each title per customer - first come first served!
Book of the day > Bread and a Dog – Natsuko Kuwahara. Phaidon. Featuring (as advertised) bread and dog, as well as recipes and the occasional cat. Have a great weekend!
Book of the day > Catherine Ceresole: Beauty Lies In The Eye. Edition Patrick Frey. “In 1979 Catherine Ceresole and her husband Nicolas moved to New York, where he was to begin training as an audio engineer. In truth, however, the couple went there because they were captivated by the city’s underground music scene. They soon became friendly with a number of musicians who Catherine began to photograph at concerts and in intimate settings. The result was a unique photographic documentary of the New York punk, no-wave and avant-garde music scene during its heyday. With her keen eye for dramatic moments, she captured them all on film: Sonic Youth, Lydia Lunch, Glenn Branca, Arto Lindsay, Christian Marclay, the Beastie Boys and many others. After they returned to Switzerland, Catherine Ceresole continued to photograph musicians and their bands — with an unfailing ear and keen eye. The book is a visual music history of the last decades, presenting the work of this unique photographer to a broad public for the first time.”
Book of the day > Piero Fornasetti: Practical Madness. Rizzoli. “An extensive illustrated survey of one of the most inventive design minds of the twentieth century. Combining whimsy and elegance, Piero Fornasetti transformed everyday objects like cups, scarves, and plates into much sought-after works of art with his idiosyncratic motifs, such as the hand, the female face, and luminescent fish. His dazzling pieces of trompe l’oeil furniture, created in collaboration with Gio Ponti, are also highly prized by collectors worldwide.
Fornasetti’s boundless imagination is celebrated here in a book published to document a major retrospective exhibition at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. The first half of the monograph is organized by type and includes Fornasetti’s paintings, drawings, and furniture. The second half focuses on favorite themes: his use of trompe l’oeil, architectural drawings, and his variations on the face of a famous operatic beauty. Featuring 400 illustrations covering almost fifty years of a protean and prolific designer and artist like no other, this is a must-have for Fornasetti connoisseurs and anyone interested in design.”
PLEASE JOIN US THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 10TH,
5:00-7:00 FOR A BOOK SIGNING WITH
JASON BRINKERHOFF: UNFINISHED DRAWING
Unfinished Drawing presents a selection of works on paper, direct from Jason Brinkerhoff's Northern California studio, that he has described as being unfinished. Brinkerhoff's drawings embody an exhaustive exploration of the female form, art historical allusions and the nuanced materiality of mark-making itself. As though encountering an archive of lifelong work we see a complete statement consisting of hundreds of drawings made over several years, each with artist's signature touch. Here is a body of work that has been suspended in an undefined state, representing drawings not as single objects but instead drawing as an ongoing act - one in which any single fragment can be further marked upon, erased, cut or cannibalized. Even so, when encountering the work, it's difficult not to isolate drawings that one would wish to collect and own, thereby seeing them as complete. This book, then, is not only the result of a desire to present a selection for a wider audience, it also poses questions about an artist's declaration of completion - or lack thereof - since the drawings no doubt embody the singularity and vigor of Jason Brinkerhoff's best work.
Our event coincides with an exhibition of select Unfinished Drawings held at FARAGO. The opening reception for the artist will be the following evening, Friday, September 11th from 7 to 9:00 PM at 224 West 8th Street in Downtown Los Angeles.
We hope to see you Thursday, September 10th between 5:00 and 7:00 PM to meet our friend Jason Brinkerhoff and celebrate the launch of Unfinished Drawing! If you would like to purchase a signed copy but cannot attend, please place an order here, or call us at 310-458-1499.
|
Book of the day > Bruce Davidson: Nature of Los Angeles 2008–2013. Steidl. "In 2008, Bruce Davidson, who had already photographed New York and Paris, began exploring Los Angeles with a focus on its exotic plant life. The arid climate, normally hostile to life, allows for an exceptional botanical diversity in L.A. County that reaches from the surrounding foothills and mountain wilderness to the Pacific Ocean, and Davidson quickly became a Los Angeles convert. "Traffic, wealth, poverty, violence and other urban phenomena give way to valiant plant life where ivy thrives on the underside of the 405 and Glendale Freeway interchanges, and a tree in the foothills regenerates itself after a wildfire has parched its bark," he writes. "Without its plant life and human respect for it, L.A. would be a vast desert void." Nature of Los Angeles 2008–2013 depicts the city in black and white, presenting its beauty and banality as emblematic of urban existence in general."
Book of the Day > Map: Exploring The World. Phaidon. “Map: Exploring the World brings together more than 300 fascinating maps from the birth of cartography to cutting-edge digital maps of the twenty-first century. The book's unique arrangement, with the maps organized in complimentary or contrasting pairs, reveals how the history of our attempts to make flat representations of the world has been full of beauty, ingenuity and innovation.
Selected by an international panel of curators, academics and collectors, the maps reflect the many reasons people make maps, such as to find their way, to assert ownership, to record human activity, to establish control, to encourage settlement, to plan military campaigns or to show political power. The selection includes the greatest names in cartography, such as James Cook, Gerard Mercator, Matthew Fontaine Maury and Phyllis Pearsall, as well as maps from indigenous cultures around the world, rarely seen maps from lesser-known cartographers, and maps of outstanding beauty and surprising individuality from the current generation of map makers.”
