Book of the Day > Roger Herman: Ceramics 1997-2018. Signed edition of 250. A gorgeous collection of artist Roger Herman's ceramics!

Mark de Paola was literally born into a photo studio on Cahuenga Blvd in Los Angeles, and grew up splitting time between Los Angeles and New York. His earliest recollections are of watching photo shoots and being completely immersed in the fashion books and periodicals of the time - Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. Mark's photographic foundation is the works of his father Alessio, Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Bert Stern, and Art Kane. Now based in New York, Mr. de Paola is a fine art photographer who has had multiple covers for the likes of Vogue Spain and Vogue Mexico, as well as campaigns and commercials for Donna Karan, Laura Biagiotti, Neutrogena, Gucci, Brioni, Sephora, Sony, Leica Camera, Giorgio RED perfume, and MAC Cosmetics to name a few. He has directed nearly seven hundred television commercials in the fashion and beauty sector and has extensive campaign and retail experience. "Created over several years, “Recent Work” includes portrait, nude, landscape, and inanimate object; illuminating de Paola’s memories, feelings and impressions of people, places and objects he has known. Carefully sequenced by the photographer himself, the series invites viewers to leave behind the everyday and journey with him... Provoking us to project meanings into its viscerally striking, blurred and saturated forms. De Paola’s desire to wield the lens as an extension of his own body is clear in the subtle way he escorts us through his cinematic world. “Recent Work” is endlessly fascinating and promises to reward those who visit and revisit it again and again.”

Please join us this Saturday, June 8th, between 4:00 and 6:00 PM at Arcana to meet and greet Mark de Paola as he unveils his limited edition publication. If you cannot attend but would like to purchase a signed copy of "Recent Work", please place your order here, or call us at 310-458-1499.

Book of the day > Mona Kuhn: She Disappeared Into Complete Silence. Published by Steidl. “Acclaimed for her intimate nudes, Mona Kuhn takes a new direction into abstraction in her latest publication, “She Disappeared Into Complete Silence”. Photographed at a golden modernist structure on the edge of Joshua Tree National Park, architectural lines, light reflections and a single figure have been carefully balanced against the backdrop of the California desert. The human figure in these images - Kuhn’s friend and collaborator Jacintha - emerges like a surrealist mirage, fragmented and indistinct, at times submerged in shadows or overexposed. The building’s facades of glass and mirrors serve as optical planes, an extension of the artist’s camera and lens. Light is split into refracting colors, desert vegetation grows sideways, inside is outside and outside in. Kuhn pushes a certain disorienting effect by introducing metallic foils as an additional surface, at times producing purely abstract results. The work marks Kuhn’s increasing use of techniques that appear to merge the figure, abstraction and landscape into one."