Book of the Day Posted Aug 03, 2022

Book of the Day > Philipp Mueller: 120 bpm

● Purchase ● The dawn of Zurich’s 1990s techno scene, in photographs, ephemera and testimonials
 
Titled after the number of beats per minute on a club track, 120 bpm tracks techno’s meteoric rise in Switzerland, where it became one of the country’s last great youth movements, leaving a massive imprint on the nightlife, clubs and ongoing innovation in electronic dance music to this day. Swiss photographer Philipp Mueller, who has shot for Vogue, GQ and Playboy, covered the dawn of the Swiss techno scene in the early 1990s, in raw photographs of Zurich’s first street parades, underground raves and parties—whether backstage in clubs or in the intimacy of private venues—for various magazines. Mueller’s photographs are interleaved here with facsimile clippings from rave magazines and fanzines, as well as firsthand accounts from some of the ravers who made the nascent scene.
Book of the Day Posted Aug 02, 2022

Book of the Day > *Signed* Colby Deal: Beautiful, Still.

● Purchase ● Beautiful, Still. is the first monograph from photographer Colby Deal, documenting the people, objects, and environments of everyday life in the Third Ward neighbourhood in Houston, Texas, where the artist grew up. In this ongoing project, currently consisting of over a thousand negatives, Deal sets out to provide a visual record of overlooked communities and the cultural characteristics gradually being erased by gentrification, as well as a depiction of communities of colour whose members are often portrayed with negative connotations. Through these instinctive black-and-white photographs, Deal’s down-to-earth approach to his subjects is made apparent; at times candid and blurred, other times poised and sharply focussed, the series builds to convey the dynamism and vibrancy of family, community, and individual life in the Third Ward. The scratches and dust left on the negatives reflect the marks of lived life and simultaneously suggest the fragility of these documents and the corresponding precarity of the fabrics of social life they often depict. Deal’s almost conversational tone — the antithesis of media portrayals of the neighbourhood — invites his viewers in with a sense of joy and intuitive playfulness. From these alternately staged and documentary images, a new narrative emerges about a reductively and oppressively narrativized place, celebrating the agency and freedom that the photographic medium can offer.
Events Posted Aug 01, 2022

PLEASE JOIN US THIS SATURDAY, AUGUST 6th, 4:00 - 6:00 PM FOR A BOOK SIGNING CLARA BALZARY: BIG FRESH AIR!

Join us Saturday, August 6th between 4:00 and 6:00 PM celebrate the launch of Clara Balzary's Big Fresh Air.
 
If you cannot attend but would like to purchase a book signed by Ms. Balzary, please place your order here or call us at 310-458-1499.
 
Clara Balzary is a Los Angeles-based photographer and filmmaker whose first book is the newly released Big Fresh Air from London's Pinch Publishing. "The photographs in Big Fresh Air were taken over the course of four days, spanning from the late spring to the late summer of 2021. All pictures are the result of a collaboration with Ruby Kernkamp and Emily Leona Rose. Kernkamp and Rose used contact improvisation techniques to create distinct movement dialogues between participants and the natural landscape, stemming from an interest in what happens when bodies give and receive weight and touch. Each day took place in the public parks in La Cañada / Flintridge, a city in the foothills of the Verdugo Mountains in Los Angeles County, during a time when groups were encouraged to gather exclusively in outdoor spaces."
Book of the Day Posted Jul 29, 2022

Book of the Day > Mark Flood in the Nineties by Clark Flood

● Purchase ● A dark chapter of art history dragged into the light.
 
Painter and provocateur, Mark Flood’s career blazed like an erratic comet thru the bubblicious art world of the early twenty-first century. Now his brother Clark Flood tells the story of Mark’s struggles of the 1990s, before he hit the big time.
 
Meticulously researched, Mark Flood in the 1990s recounts accusations of Satanism, confiscation of work by the local police, and a decision to sell advertising space on the surface of paintings. We learn about a profusion of false identities and Flood’s innovative use of surrogates for public appearances. Finally, we retrace the artist’s prolific output as he spirals down into depression and fantasies of suicide. This arc unexpectedly culminates in the discovery of the lace painting technique that would make him rich.

Mark Flood in the 1990s reproduces hundreds of paintings and documents, many never published before, as well as vintage photographs of studios and exhibits.
Book of the Day Posted Jul 27, 2022

Book of the Day > Larry Vigon: Serious Play

● Purchase ● Larry Vigon is an award-winning art director and designer who is credited for some of the most iconic album covers from the 70’s and 80’s. As a graduate from Art center College of Design in 1972 Vigon set out to create a career in album cover design combining his love of music and art. For the next 20 years that is exactly what he did. He has designed over 200 albums and single sleeves for Fleetwood Mac, Eric Clapton, Counting Crows, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Chicago, Pat Benatar, Carol King, Sparks, Boney James, Thomas Dolby and many more. Vigon has partnered with some of the greatest photographers of the late 20th century including Helmut Newton, George Hurrell, Joyce Tenneson, William Claxton, Peter Beard, and numerous other. After two decades of almost exclusively album cover work, he branched out into corporate design including the clients IBM, Epson, The City of Los Angeles, Paramount Television, The Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas, The House of Blues, also Broadway posters, advertising campaigns, magazines and books, including C.G. Jung’s Red Book. Vigon first book in 2006 DREAM A Journal was published by W.W. Norton, New York.
 
When Vigon is not working on commercial projects he enjoys creating personal art projects but often combining the two disciplines. His paintings are in private collections all over the world.
Events Posted Jul 25, 2022

Book Signing & Discussion with Steve Keene this Saturday, July 30th from 4:00 to 6:00 PM!

PLEASE JOIN US THIS SATURDAY,
JULY 30th, 4:00 - 6:00 PM
FOR A BOOK SIGNING + DISCUSSION

THE STEVE KEENE ART BOOK!
 

Join us Saturday, July 30th between 4:00 and 6:00 PM celebrate the launch of The Steve Keene Art Book, co-published by our friends at Hat & Beard Press. Hat & Beard Editor and Publisher J.C. Gabel will host a lively discussion of Steve Keene's work with the artist himself, in conversation with Daniel Efram, the producer of the Steve Keene Art Book, and the co-host of the 30-year retrospective of Keene's work, up at Palm Grove Social through September 1, 2022.

If you cannot attend but would like to purchase a book signed by Steve Keene and Daniel Efram, please place your order here or call us at 310-458-1499.

 

Steve Keene is the most prolific American painter of all time, producing more than 300,000 hand-painted works via his studio / chainlink fence cage where he paints more than fifty paintings at a time. Lovingly known for making affordable art, as well as being the indie rock cover art maker to Pavement, The Apples in stereo, and Silver Jews, Keene has long been under-appreciated for his importance to the nineties indie art and music scenes. The Steve Keene Art Book - originally conceived during his sold out 2016 show at Shepard Fairey’s Subliminal Projects Gallery - is the first art book dedicated exclusively to his work.

 

The book features essays by musician Hilarie Bratset (The Apples in stereo), writer Sam Brumbaugh, Elle Chang, Daniel Efram, Shepard Fairey, journalist Karen Loew, and Christina Zafiris, along with comments from Starling Keene, curators Jonathan LeVine, Leo Fitzgerald and Talia Logan, alongside a dazzling two hundred and seventy-seven reproductions of Keene’s works. Efram takes readers into Keene’s utilitarian chainlink “painting cage” for an all-access pass for a peek into the artist’s fascinating systemic technique. The Steve Keene Art Book is co-published by Hat & Beard Press and Tractor Beam and has been made possible through a crowdfunding campaign that included hundreds of supporters - from Keene's former hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia, to fans from all over the world - who contributed pieces from their own personal collections. It is produced by Daniel Efram, edited by Gail O’Hara, editor-in-chief of the “legendary indie nerd bible” chickfactor, and designed by Grammy-nominated graphic designer Henry Owings.

Events Posted Jul 23, 2022

Reminder: John Divola Tomorrow (Sunday 7/24) at Arcana!

4:00 - 6:00 PM FOR A BOOK SIGNING

JOHN DIVOLA: SCAPES

 

Please join us Sunday, July 24th between 4:00 and 6:00 PM celebrate the arrival of Mr. Divola's stunning new Skinnerboox publication. If you cannot attend but would like to purchase a signed copy, please place your order here or call us at 310-458-1499.


"Cameras and their users are caught between the universal and the particular. Photography and photographs; humanity and whatever specific kind of human we happen to be. There is at least something existentially universal about John Divola’s photographic adventures. The lone observer moving through the world and reflecting upon it through various camera possibilities. But nobody is truly universal, or only universal. We each come wrapped in our particulars, just as each and every photograph belongs to the universe of photography precisely insofar as it is particular. Forever the two. When I look at Divola’s photographs, I sense something universal because I sense all the particulars. Yes, a white, male, middle class Southern Californian, post-conceptual artist of the kind that makes these kinds of photographs. But nobody makes photographs quite like Divola. He is one of a kind, and therein are the universal and the particular." - David Campany from his text for "SCAPES", which contains selections from three of the photographer's most celebrated bodies of early black and white work, "Four Landscapes", "As Far As I Could Get", and "Dogs Chasing My Car in the Desert."

Book of the Day Posted Jul 22, 2022

Book of the Day > Donavon Smallwood: Languor

● Purchase ● Languor is an ode to NYC’s Central Park. With the pandemic at hand and the history of Seneca Village in mind, Smallwood created photographs of tentative comfort and appreciation as an examination of nature, home, tranquility, and escape.
Book of the Day Posted Jul 21, 2022

Book of the Day > *Signed* Dennis Morris: Super Perry - Iconic Images of Lee "Scratch" Perry

● Purchase ● This book contains 42 treasured photographs taken by Dennis Morris, who has earned the trust of many influential, history making musicians - including Bob Marley and the Sex Pistols. ⁡
 
As the subtitle "The Iconic Images of Lee Scratch Perry" suggests, the entire collection is truly iconic. From the recording sessions at the legendary Black Ark Studio in the 1970s, to the joyous photo sessions in the 2000s and beyond, to Perry wandering languidly through the London nights in his later years - the reader will be able to enjoy a truly iconic images of the god of dub throughout this book. ⁡
 
Here is a "small part" of the mysterious and charming life of a legendary man who lived amidst the waves and color of sound.
Book of the Day Posted Jul 20, 2022

Book of the Day > *Signed​* Mason Saltarrelli: Rowing

● Purchase ● Rowing collects 55 works on paper by artist Mason Saltarrelli. The oversized hardcover volume is Saltarrelli's first major publication and documents over a decade of the artist's practice, including work from 2008–2019. Rowing allows readers to meander over both the front and back of layered scenes—gouache, graphite, color pencil and paint create a beguiling palimpsest occasionally punctuated by loose, barely-there figuration, eyes and faces are both human and animal. The pieces are saturated, worked into on front, on verso, and meant to be viewed in calm, contemplative succession.
 
Rowing is a springboard, a place where narrative abounds, one just has to look for themselves to find it.
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