Book of the day + book signing tonight, 6-8! > Jonas Wood and Shio Kusaka: Blackwelder. Gagosian/Rizzoli with Karma, NY. “A fully illustrated look into the world of artists Jonas Wood and Shio Kusaka, published in conjunction with the artists’ debut exhibition at Gagosian Gallery, Hong Kong. Both Kusaka’s porcelain vessels and Wood’s drawn and painted interiors are depicted within this new book in vibrant color plates and photographs. Wood and Kusaka draw from each other’s work as painter and potter to probe the tensions between representation and expression, precision and chance, and  influences from art history and life.  
An insightful new text by art critic Chris Wiley accompanies color images of Wood and Kusaka at their shared studio on Blackwelder Street in Los Angeles, where they work alongside one another to create works that draw from personal memory and their shared existence as a married couple. 

Join us for a book signing for

Shio Kusaka + Jonas Wood: Blackwelder.

Published by Rizzoli and Gagosian.

Book Launch and Signing this Wednesday, July 8^th from 6-8:00 PM.

Deanna Templeton

Have a great 4th of July -- we're open until 3:00 on 7/4/15.

Book of the day > Mark Steinmetz: The Players. Nazraeli Press.  “This long-awaited publication presents 73 of Mark Steinmetz’s photographs of adolescent and teenaged baseball players, on the field and in the dugout, focused on the game and lost in their own worlds. Made between 1986 and 1990, the photographs are classic Steinmetz: tenderness, humor, and humanism are all present here, as is Steinmetz’s exquisite use of natural light and attention to poetic detail.

'The kids in Steinmetz’s photographs are ages 6 to 13, with a few older boys. Steinmetz must remember how awkward and uncoordinated bodies that age can be. His empathy is evident throughout the series. Most of these kids are too young to have the grace, skill or concentration required and are too green to experience the sheer pleasure of knowing they are good, maybe really good, ballplayers in an unforgiving sport. These kids run into each other in pursuit of a fly ball. Hope drives their swings more than their awareness of the art of hitting...Steinmetz concentrates less on the players in the field than those outside the base lines who are waiting to play, or cooling off. He observes the managers as well as the spectators who love the game or one of the players, or who just have a free afternoon. He sees “high fives” as well as the “what were you thinking” moments.  His photographs have all the skill and grace lacking in the players.” — from the Introduction by Anne Tucker.'

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Book of the day > Munari’s Books. Princeton Architectural Press. “One of the greatest graphic designers of the twentieth century—called by Picasso ‘the Leonardo of our time’--Italian artist and designer Bruno Munari considered the book the best medium to communicate his visual ideas, showcase his art, and convey his creative spirit. Primarily produced in large quantities for the general public, his more-than-sixty publications—from design manuals and manifestos to visionary tactile children's books—displayed all the beauty and technical ingenuity of works of art.
Munari's Books, the first English-language monograph to focus on his remarkable achievements in publishing, examines in detail his seventy-year legacy in print, from his pioneering work as a graphic designer and collaborations with major publishers to his experimental visual projects and innovative contributions to the fields of painting, sculpture, design, photography, and teaching. Featuring critical essays and a wealth of color illustrations, this long-overdue monograph is a visually rich introduction to Munari's remarkably multifaceted career.”

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We'll be open on Saturday, July 4th from 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM for all of your patriotic book buying needs.

Book of the day > Making Africa - A Continent of Contemporary Design. Vitra Design Museum.

“Making Africa takes a fresh look at African design. For the first time, we have a book that focuses on creative accomplishments on the continent, without being obsessed with the usual tropes of recycling, humanitarian design or traditional crafts. Instead, Making Africa shows a new generation of designers who use their work as a tool for economic, political and social change and therefore also to create a new future for the continent. Their creative output defies all definitions of genres – crossing over classical fields such as furniture design, product design and typography to encompass digital media, art, photography, architecture and film. A large section of the catalogue is dedicated to documenting work by over 120 protagonists of Africa’s new creative epoch – including Cyrus Kabiru, Cheick Diallo, Mário Macilau, Francis Kéré, David Adjaye, Kunlé Adeyemi, Bodys Isek Kingelez, Robin Rhode, Alaforu Sikoki, Selly Raby Kan and many more. The historical and theoretical background is explored in essays and discussions with Okwui Enwezor, Koyo Kouoh, Edgar Pieterse and Amelie Klein, among others. These are complemented by statements from around 70 other experts from Africa, who met at interviews and think tanks in cities such as Cape Town, Johannesburg, Lagos, Dakar, Nairobi and Cairo. This is a book about the future of Africa and about a new, more open way of understanding design – which means it is also a book about what design can achieve in the 21st century.”

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Book of the day > Richard Misrach: The Mysterious Opacity of Other Beings. Aperture. “Since the publication of Richard Misrach's bestselling and critically acclaimed publication On the Beach, he has continued to photograph at the same location, building a body of work that has been exhibited as On the Beach 2.0—a reference to the technological and optical developments that have made the intensely detailed, exquisitely rendered depictions possible. The Mysterious Opacity of Other Beings focuses less on the abstraction of water, sand and mote-sized figures, instead honing in on the gestures and expressions of bathers adrift in the ocean. Misrach has rarely ventured into portraiture; this work is his first to focus exclusively on the human figure. Each photograph features one or more individuals crisply rendered from a distance, as they seem to levitate among turquoise waves, isolated from everything save the shifting patterns of the ocean. There is ambiguity and a sense of the uncanny in the figures suspended in the water: are they approaching the shore or moving away from it? Each image is presented both as full frame and as a series of enlarged details that enable the viewer to linger on each individual's surrender of their body to the sea.”

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Book of the day > Mark Bradford: Scorched Earth. Prestel. This generously illustrated volume features Mark Bradford's newest work which deals with the body and the performance of identity. Mark Bradford's layered, multi-textured paintings have earned him wide critical acclaim. His latest body of work comprises a new group of paintings and a video, each of which cycles around the idea of the body in crisis. Bradford witnessed the LA riots (1992) from his studio and has translated the fury, fear, outrage, pandemonium, and lasting wounds into artworks. This volume reproduces in full new paintings in which Bradford carved into the layered surface of the work creating depressions and arteries that structure these otherwise abstract compositions. Bradford's new video references the history of black standup comedy taking on Eddie Murphy's controversial concert film "Delirious" (1983). In the video Bradford takes on Murphy's searing comments on sexuality, reinterpreting this important cultural moment while considering the modalities of gender and its performance. Accompanying texts include Bradford's trenchant performance script and a scholarly text by Butler explores Bradford's critique of pervasive cultural racism and homophobia in society as a whole.

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