By Jim Johnson

Here is the question: “Why do original works of art often strike us, at first, as being coarse, awkward and difficult to place?” While John Berger poses this query in a considerably different context, it applies both to the immensely influential work produced by members of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) and, arguably, to the organization in its entirety. The AACM is quite self-consciously difficult to place precisely because it seeks to sustain space -unavailable within existing practices and institutions- for the exercise of oppositional imagination.

The AACM is a four decade old collective of experimental African-American musicians who celebrate what its members have come to call “Great Black Music.” In A Power Greater than Itself musician, composer, and AACM stalwart George Lewis presents “an interim evaluation of the collective’s legacy.” One might think, given the book’s considerable bulk and its extended genesis (including both participant observation and hundreds of hours of interview-conversations with AACM members), that this is an overly modest description. In a sense it is. But Lewis insists that his is a provisional account because the history he chronicles is ongoing and because the participants themselves have diverse, often conflicting, views of their joint organizational and artistic project.

The AACM was founded in 1965, emerging literally from a series of kitchen table conversations among four Chicago musicians. Many first generation members of the collective grew up in working class families that had arrived in the racially segregated South Side of Chicago as part of the “Great Migration” of African-Americans from the rural south to the urban north. Acknowledging the social, economic and political forces that shaped these prosaic beginnings, Lewis offers his account as an antidote to “the historiography of jazz” that “has rarely been able to find a place for tropes of deliberation, planning and organization on the part of musicians. Rather, the image of the creative process has favored cliched images of spontaneity, along with portrayals of musicians as irresponsible, cryptically cliquish, and desirous of instant gratification.” His aim is to show how this group of working class African-Americans organized themselves under inauspicious conditions to assert control over the production, dissemination, and perpetuation of their work. In the process Lewis provides a sympathetic, but nonetheless frank, indeed at times frankly critical perspective on the AACM. He acknowledges the aesthetic, political, financial, generational, and social differences that the membership navigated as they envisioned, launched and sought to sustain the organization. In fact, he subtly uses material from his interviews to bring the resulting conflicts to the fore, in effect encouraging the participants to disagree among themselves.

From the outset the collective has been dedicated to original music, focusing as much on composition as improvisation. More strongly, they have consistently resisted the standard dichotomy between the two. As a result the AACM membership has sustained an ambivalent relation to what is commonly called the “jazz” tradition. This is not because they have failed to master and extend that tradition. Far from it. Rather, it is because, as Lewis points out, common conceptions of “the tradition” embody notions of racial authenticity that are overly confining both aesthetically and socially. The AACM commitment to creativity revolves around experimentation —in composition, in instrumentation, and in performance— even as multiple differences among members prompt them to disagree among themselves over what counts as experimentation. Even on so seemingly central an imperative, in other words, there has been no AACM orthodoxy. Indeed, over time, the democratic character of the collective has nourished somewhat contentious reflection on fundamental commitments. Lewis notes early on: “in my experience, the people who were trying to figure out what the AACM was about included, most crucially, AACM people themselves.”

This focus on experimentation and creative exploration makes artistic projects undertaken under the AACM’s auspices difficult to place. This I true for audiences -none of the individuals or ensembles (many very well known, but too numerous to mention) who make up the association are “popular.” But Lewis makes clear that it is true in other respects too. For example, sound engineers with expectations set by recording standard jazz instrumentation and formats were puzzled by the task of capturing on tape AACM performances (that range from spatial and hushed to nearly cacophonous within any given composition). Likewise, critics have repeatedly been flummoxed because AACM groups often are collaborations among ensembles of multi-instrumentalists that defy the conventional expectation that some “leader” will serve as spokesman. As Lewis makes amply clear in these and many other ways, originality, indeed, makes the AACM difficult to place. The AACM itself affords a wonderful vehicle for thinking about originality, experimentation and imagination in the arts.

Jim Johnson lives in the countryside south of Rochester New York. He is a political theorist by trade and keeps a blog called (Notes on) Politics, Theory & Photography.

The economic growth of the giant China has been accompanied by an explosion of ‘creativity’ flooding the international contemporary art markets. While its creative value may be questionable, there can be no doubt that this is a tidal wave of art prepared to defend itself in the face of western culture and, as with other areas of Chinese pride, with political and financial backing. For many, the headquarters of this movement would be Dashanzi, an area of art galleries –mainly foreign– commonly known as the 798 Art District. In this area, with full governmental approval, art is exchanged for hard currency, consolidating its position as the platform for the promotion of Chinese art and at the same time creating an important tourist attraction. Here, under a façade of freedom of expression, artistic freedom is subordinated to business with the blessings of the Chinese government. It can be no coincidence that the epicenter of Chinese art is found in the political centre of the country –in the more lax coastal towns it would hardly be possible to exercise such a strict governmental control. And while the 798 Art District was dependent on hand-outs for a survival which hung by a thread until 2005, nowadays it is a thriving business centre, seen by many local artists as no more than an exhibition space where artists have sold-out and dance to the tune of foreign drums. At the same time it must be appreciated that without foreign help Chinese modern art would never have risen to the respected position it holds today.It was foreign galleries who opened the doors of the art business to Chinese artists (many of whom, seeing the economic perspectives, have now become gallery owners themselves).

Photographic Report of Bejing #798 District Made by Jorge Larrañaga.
Courtesy of the author.

It was the foreign galleries who created an intercultural dialogue between China and the west. And, above all, it was the foreign galleries who provided a space for contemporary art which, since the first repression in the 1980’s, did not enjoy governmental approval. Although there do now exist museums such as the China National Art Gallery or the Millennium Monument Art Museum, which occasionally offer exhibitions of modern art, it is the foreign galleries which are still the main trustees of new Chinese tendencies. Here is a heterogeneous mixture of spaces from all over the world –Spain being one of the few European countries not represented in Peking. Two galleries were key members in this transformation which led to today’s 798 Art District: The pioneer Red Gate Gallery, founded near to Beijing station in 1991 by the Australian Brian Wallace, and the American The Courtyard Gallery, opened in 1996 in a section of the Forbidden City. Both galleries are now prestigious spaces for the promotion of Chinese artists which are not only essential to the Peking art scene but enjoy international recognition as exporters of Chinese talent.

The presence of foreigners in the 798 Art Zone is nothing new. It was East German engineers and architects who challenged Soviet taste at the end of the 1950’s and helped to create this small city factory in a style reminiscent of Bauhaus. Although a perfect model of Chinese manufacturing, with the reforms of Deng Xiaoping the factories in the area became obsolete and by the beginning of the 1990’s were practically abandoned. The great free spaces in this and other peripheral zones led to the Central Academy of Fine Art (CAFA) opening an exhibition space in nearby factory 706 in 1995. This was the first movement towards decentralization, where art abandoned the centre of Peking, which was increasingly controlled by speculation, and moved to the lower-cost outskirts of the city. When Robert Bernell decided to move his art bookshop to the 798 Art District in 2001 the only ‘artistic’ neighbours he had were the Dean of Sculpture at CAFA, Sui Jianguo, who had set up his studio nearby, and the writer and musician Liu Suola. The American Bernell was known as the editor of chinese-art.com, the first e-zine in English dealing with contemporary Chinese art, as well as being the owner of the bookshop and publishers Timezone 8. His decision to transfer his business to the new space was based on one consideration: cheap space. A short time afterwards Huang Rui arrived in the area and with him began the great metamorphosis which would transform Dashanzi into what it is today.

Photographic Report of Bejing #798 District Made by Jorge Larrañaga.
Courtesy of the author.

Huang Rui, an artist who had suffered the effects of the cultural revolution, belonged to a group of avant-garde artists known as xingxing (stars), censured at the end of the 1970’s. In the mid 1980’s he followed the trail of many Chinese artists and took refuge in Japan where he was to marry and some years later be granted citizenship. In Japan he participated in a number of exhibitions and began his friendship with Tabata Yukihito of the Tokyo Gallery, curator of the exhibition ‘Chinese Contemporary Art Now’ among others.

Seeing the new atmosphere of openness in a country of growing possibilities, Huang Rui decided to return to Peking in the year 2000 and rented a former factory space of two hundred square meters in Dashanzi. Soon afterwards he approached Tabata with the proposal for an experimental, non-commercial project which would make use of the huge industrial warehouses in the area. Tabata traveled to the district but showed a degree of skepticism for the viability of the project, mainly due to the poor state in which he found many of the factories and the enormous amounts of money necessary to complete renovation work. Huang Rui promised that he himself would assume the responsibility for the rebuilding and that he would undertake to do this within a strict budget. And it was Huang Rui, with his own hands and using recycled materials, who completed his studio-loft and the Beijing Tokyo Art Projects gallery –the first exhibition space in the 798 Art Zone. More than one thousand people attended the opening of the space which from the start recieved international interest thanks to the prestigious magazine ‘Wallpaper’. One of the keys to the success of this venture was, without doubt, the moderate and careful character of Tabata. While Huang Rui wished for an artistic project that would fight the system and push the new Chinese liberties to the limits, Tabata decided not to go against the grain. Firstly he asked that the Maoist slogans on the cement walls of the factory should be preserved during renovation work. Secondly he named Feng Boyi, a renowned art critic and curator who enjoyed political favour, as the curator of the gallery, rejecting Huang Rui’s proposal of Li Xianting, an anti-government art critic who was famous for his numerous censured exposés. The decision was a wise one: there have never been problems with censorship and the relationship with local authorities continues to be good in spite of rumours in recent years of its decline. In no time at all –in yet another example of the enormous speed with which things have changed in China over the last decade– galleries, cafés, shops and other businesses related to the arts have been established in the 798 Art District. Today there are some forty artists’ studios, more than forty galleries of all sizes and nationalities, and almost thirty workshops dealing in design, fashion or publicity. The neighborhood is completed by a variety of restaurants, cafés, and designer clubs, all of which have converted this grey place of sooty walls and open plumbing into the artistic and cultural centre of China.

Nobody knows what will happen when the Olympic Games in Peking and the EXPO of Shanghai are over, when the world starts to lose interest in China. The organizers, however, remain optimistic and believe that the 798 Art District will continue to function. This belief is lent weight by the fact that the Ullens Foundation have renovated a space of five thousand square meters (the largest in the area) which, for the size and prestige of the collections, can be classed as a museum. The Guggenheim Foundation had also shown an interest in the space and, rumour has it, continue to look for a location in the area in an all-out battle against both MOMA and the Pompidou Centre. The Dashanzi area is not the economical option that it once was, however. Just as in the East Village area of New York in the 70’s, the steep rise in ground rental prices (tripled since 2002) have caused many artists to move out. Heading east along the same highway that leads to the 798 Art District we find the East End Art District, one of the new locations chosen as residence by many artists and which is now home to such well known galleries as China Art and Archive Warehouse, China Contemporary Art Institute, Universal Studios –Beijing Art Centre and the Belgian gallery F2. Even further east we come to Feijacun, a community of artists set up in another abandoned factory, many of whom were victims of the destruction of the Suojiacun community in 2005, declared illegal by the government. The initiative most likely to survive and continue, however, is the project being carried out in Songzhuang, a small town to the east of Beijing which the government intends to be the cultural centre of China. Whatever happens in the 798 Art District, it will always be remembered as the place where Chinese art came out of the shadows and, under the watchful eye of the government, found its personality and worth in the international art scene.

Selected Galleries

Galleria Continua – A prestigious Italian gallery opened at the end of 2005 which has held such acclaimed exhibitions as the one-man shows of Chen Zen and Daniel Buren. 798 Photo Gallery – The first Chinese gallery to specialize in photography. Although it mainly shows work by Chinese photographers, there are occasional exhibitions of well known foreign photographers. Houses a comprehensive photography bookshop. White Space Beijing – A branch of the Alexander Ochs gallery in Berlin with interesting collaborations and exchanges between Chinese and European artists. South Gate Space – Mixed-media space run by Huang Rui, used for concerts, performances, theatre, opera and so on. China Art Seasons – Singapore-based gallery with an extensive show of Chinese and south-east Asian art. Also artists residence. Marella Gallery – Milanese gallery established in the 798 Art District in 2005 after spending some years producing itinerant exhibitions of video art. Work by new and established Chinese artists. 25000 Cultural Transmission Center – As well as being a centre of exhibitions, conferences and artists in residence, this is the centre of the ‘Long March’ project in which group of artists emulate the 25,000 li (100,000 km) march completed by Mao and his Red Army. Chinese Contemporary – British gallery of 300 square meters dedicated to post ‘89 Chinese artists.

Jorge Larrañaga is art critic and freelance photographer based in Tokyo (Japan).

For generations, architecture in the UK, and indeed the world, has been dominated by older white men, with little room for women, minorities, and representatives of other cultures. Slowly but surely, this community is being infiltrated by architects that better represent the British public and its imperialist past. Among these architects is rising star David Adjaye. Born in Tanzania to Ghanaian diplomat parents, David spent his early formative years traveling throughout Africa before settling in the UK to complete his education and begin his architectural career. As Mr. Adjaye’s fame rises, becoming known not only in the UK, but throughout the world, it becomes easy to typecast him as an African architect. Indeed, many of his ideas are borne of African architectural, planning, and design ideals, but these concepts have become design informants rather than dictators of particular typologies.

Adjaye Associates, Nobel Peace Centre. Photos by Tim Soar. Courtesy of Adjaye Associates.

While impossible to distill the entire African continent’s design aesthetic into an all encompassing ideal, there are a few artistic themes that are consistent throughout. Highly abstracted and rhythmic designs are more prominent than representative art. The organization of these abstracted forms and patterns lends itself to be understood as much through the imagination as through immediate visual impact. This cerebral view of art is furthered through the abundance of sculpture. Across the continent, three dimensional experiential artwork has historically taken precedence over 2d works. Sculpture, architecture, and even two dimensional artwork such as textile designs are generally intended to be experienced in the round, where the space created, contained, or interrupted by the artwork is just as important as the art itself. This concept of positive-negative space has directly affected the design and use of African public space. In cities, public life takes place in the markets and streets, with citizens occupying the 3d network created by the absence of buildings. The relationship between experiencing the three dimensionality of the city and the experience of sculpture and its surrounding white space is clear.

Influenced by his early life traveling throughout Africa, as well as his more recent documentation of African cities, David Adjaye has begun to include some of these African design principles into his western architectural projects. Three such projects successfully incorporating these concepts are the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, The Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, and Rivington Place in Shoreditch.

Adjaye Associates, Rivington Place. Photos by Ed Reeve. Courtesy of Adjaye Associates.

The Museum of Contemporary Art is an interesting investigation into public and private space whose influence of African planning and design on its form may not be immediately apparent. The building, standing solemnly amid the large plaza, functions as a collection of spaces organized as a mini city. The co-mingling space created in-between the various rooms is crucial to the experience. The energy of these informal networks is reminiscent of the energy found in the daily markets of African cities.

The 3d and urban qualities of African design are also evident in the design of the Nobel Peace Center, a collaboration with Chris Ofili (an African born UK artist). Because Adjaye was not permitted to make significant changes to the existing structure, he opted to create a pavilion space that is equal parts three dimensional sculpture and building. The tube-like pavilion interrupts the path of travel for dignitaries and the public visiting the Peace Center, engaging them in ideas of urban space. Once inside the building, visitors pass through a series of similarly designed spaces, reflecting the exterior architectural insertion. The sculptural qualities of the building and public space are at once African, and yet completely modern in their application.

Rivington Place has a particularly evident African graphic historicity. Designed to house the Institute of International Visual Arts and the photographic agency Autograph ABP, the rhythm of the interior informs the materiality and volume of the exterior. That volume is enclosed in a skin whose perforations and lattice pattern were directly inspired by a Sowei mask from Sierra Leone. This element of public exterior sculpture and pattern making becomes a focus for the building without sacrificing any functionality, enhancing the African concept of 3d space in art.

Adjaye’s work uniquely incorporates many of these African concepts of space and form into a modern western application, rather than providing simplified reiterations of African designs. The resulting works are truly modern structures with a subconscious memory of Britain and Africa’s joint past. Whether inspired by the graphic nature of a piece of African art or craft, or inspired by the energetic use of public spaces, Adjaye succeeds in developing this unique ethnic and architectural blend, helping to invigorate an architectural and cultural attitude that has long ignored its imperialist history.

Michelle Linden is an architect based in Seattle (USA) and author of the blog Atelier A+D.

As taste and attitude change over time, so do the ways art is informed, filtered and shaped. Timelessness is an elegant concept yet problematic. To say that timelessness is the mark of artistic integrity is to posit that the universe is static or that it has stopped accelerating. This is not good news to purists as things come and go and are, at times, cyclical, and the only thing constant is change. At its core is the dysrhythmic state of painting, an irregular art pulse condition, which signifies contradiction and synthesis of creative ferment and robust manually produced art in a digital age.

In a fluid and complex world, artists feed on a great variety of sources, histories, and influences. The fundamental challenges of today’s art are in definition and making of meaning: defining its own transmutation and finding the right process. It is important to critically look at the direction current art has taken whatever the factor and context might be —whether to celebrate life or to lament the horrors of war and the ecosystem— for much of painting created after 9/11 is no more than visual confectionery that only goes so far as to delight the eyes and numb the senses.

Eight remarkable New York-based painters, by contrast, take on mundane objects that through material interventions and processes shift from a recognizable mode into one less definable, resulting in objects that tend to sit between classifiable elements. Abandoning the doctrinaire and restrictive diets of the 60s and 70s formalism, contemporary abstraction surges and loads up on low and high tech regimen, absorbing all manner of things into the infinitely mutable space of the canvas. Yu Okuzono and Nadege Morey share emblematic, linear, and geometric iconography in their paintings, but are poles apart in context and culture. Alison Tirrell addresses media materials and strips newspapers of their purpose as journals or mediums of news, while Christopher McGill delivers a gritty tableau infused with memory and literary allusions in his well composed canvas. Arlene Hutcheson creates color permutations and nuanced surfaces in ways that give new meaning to abstract lyricism. Amalia Piccinini, vanOs, and Seo Hyung Yoo locate their practices along the interface of elemental abstraction and representation. All navigate the ambiguous, personal and often sensuously surreal, they deal with alternating forces in a collision —synthesis and rupture, absence and presence, concealment and revelation, innocence and knowledge, strength and vulnerability— in relation to worldly and experiential subjectivity. The painted objects acquire new aesthetic roles, while retaining vestiges of their former more utilitarian lives.

They are proof positive of a city in flux where every generation is particularly so and more likely to continually gravitate to something new. One can argue that only through conceptual irony will the blurred boundaries of collective and individualistic styles slide into dissolution to become the order of the day.

Among many things, the works presented in this project question our perceptions not only of the systems inherent in art culture but also of the world in general.

Mariano Del Rosario is an artist and professor based in New York (USA).

I have followed Alice Maher’s career ever since I was her student in Ireland during the later 80s, the time she began to attract significant attention as an artist. Her early works –large expressive, baroque, drawings where figures and the spaces they occupy appear subject to some urgent but temporary force of transformation– made a permanent impression on my psyche. I believed an interview with the artist might help explicate both my early and on-going fascination with her output. However, given the nature of fascination and the power of Maher’s art, I found formulating questions for this interview difficult. So much so I contacted a friend in Ireland, the writer Gerard Staunton, who is very familiar with Maher’s work. He explained my difficulty: There is a rare sense of jouissance, something specifically and convincingly fetishistic about Maher’s work that appears to become dulled and blunted by any kind of earnest contextualization.

Alice Maher, Dark Lake, 2007, Charcoal on Wall, 17 x 6.5 m. Courtesy of the artist.

Your 2008 show at the David Nolan Gallery in Manhattan is titled Hypnerotomachia. Please tell me about this show.

I am showing 23 small pencil drawings called The Night Garden, six large charcoal drawings and five etchings on eggs (ostrich eggs!). Everything is quite densely worked; even my pencil drawings have hundreds and thousands of ghost markings. I have been studying and looking at Hieronymus Bosch for a year now and am influenced by the excessiveness of mood and hyper-fecundation that emanates from his Garden of Earthly Delights.

The title comes from Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, a weird, erotic, allegorical tale by Francesco Colonna that was first printed in Venice in 1499. A friend sent it to me saying it reminded her of the excessive detail in my new works. I love the book and the strange and forgotten words. ‘Hypnerotomachia’ is often translated as ‘The Strife of Love in a Dream’ but, like all translations, this is undoubtedly a lie!

The lie appeals to you?

I love lies and half-truths because the unadulterated truth is horribly boring.

Alice Maher, Beautiful Mouth, 2006, cast bronze, 30 X 51 X 38 cm. In background ‘Myriapod’ 2007, charcoal on paper, 152.5 X 204 cm. Courtesy of the artist.

Yes, myth and legend very much informs your work.

They say that myths teach us how to relate to the Gods and fairy tales tell us how to relate to each other. But I am interested in the fact that fairytales are primarily handed down as oral rather than written accounts, making them a great vehicle for metamorphosis and flux. Stories grow and obtain legs depending on who is telling them.

This explains the great leaps of scale in your drawings and installations?

Yes. Scale is an ever moving feast in fairy tales, where giant beanstalks and thumb-sized children live amongst the regular population. I am not interested in the medium-size scale of things and I believe this stems from an interest in hyper-states, as in dreams or times of illness or states of physical change like adolescence. I have always been influenced by the non-mainstream; in art history, the Italian Renaissance with all its enlightenment did not excite me as much as medieval times where you find skewed perspective and disproportionate scale. I think this is why Bosch has preoccupied me lately. There have been hundreds of books and theses written on his Earthly Delight images and yet nobody can truly explain what is going on. His ‘garden’ is a fully functioning integrated world where humans, fruits and birds exist in a wholly believable topsy-turvy scale and this often is the same in the world of the fairy or wonder-tale.

Now you will say that the fairy-tale is the classic feminine site of the margin.

Well, feminist theory has informed some representations of your work.

I am not as concerned with feminist theory as feminist theory is concerned with me. I am a feminist, of course, and have been very aware of Irish women’s struggle for equality, especially in the 70’s, when the church still ruled both public and private lives here with an iron fist. But I am very clear that I do not work to anyone’s agenda but my own.

Your recent work includes what the critic Jennie Guy referred to as ‘overtly decorative influences’.

The devil is in the detail! You will find decoration clinging to the edges of buildings and around the margins of books, everywhere it can insinuate itself. Decoration is a kind of creeping weed. But while there are patterns in my drawings it is not repetitive: they are all hand drawn and subtly show off their ‘mistakes’.

The language of your artworks has changed so much since the early drawings.

In the late eighties expressive forms were current and I would have fallen under this influence. As time went on I began to develop a personal visual vocabulary and sought out new forms that could embody this.

Brian Curtin is an art critic and occasional curator based in Bangkok.

The Rubell Family Collection (RFC) is one of the biggest and most important private contemporary art collections in the world. The collection has been assembled over the last 44 years, beginning shortly after the marriage of Don and Mera Rubell in 1964, when both husband and wife had the idea of collecting contemporary art. Their son, Jason, and daughter, Jennifer, joined their parents in collecting the works of art at a relatively young age and recently Jason’s wife, Michelle, has also joined the team.

Installation View, Euro-Centric, Part 1, Rubell Family Collection, Miami.
Courtesy of the Rubell Family Collection.

Today the collection is made up of more than 6000 works –sculptures, paintings, installations, photography and videos, dating from the 1960’s to the present day. Although this might not be the largest collection there is, without doubt it forms the most representative, important and complete collection to be found in the USA. Far more significant than the number of pieces it holds is the character of the collection itself. This character has been created, firstly, by the extensive travels of the Rubell family throughout the world, collecting modern art from Europe, Africa, Central and Latin America, among other places. Added to this is the family’s wish to share their collection with humanity; the diffusion of the Rubell Foundation connects it to all the museums in the world, especially those dedicated to modern art such as the Tate Gallery, the Pompidou Centre and the Whitney Museum. Pieces from the Rubell Family Collection are to be found on loan in all the most important exhibitions around the globe. Due to the large number of works it contains, series can be composed thematically, regionally or by generations, and these travel from institution to institution for the pleasure of a wide-ranging public. It should also be mentioned that the foundation plays an important role in Art Basel, one of the most well known art fairs in Miami, where the collection is housed.

Installation View, Euro-Centric, Part 1, Rubell Family Collection, Miami.
Courtesy of the Rubell Family Collection.

Many years ago the Rubell Family Collection was moved to Wynwood in Miami, Florida, an area now known as the Art District and recognised as a centre for contemporary art, but in those days an unremarkable industrial and residential zone. The Rubell family were the first to move into the area, alongside a space which served as a form of artists’ studio. Within a short time many galleries, artists’ workshops and collectors were also to be found there, transforming the area into what it is today. The Art District is run by an association formed of 45 art institutions, among them museums, collectors, galleries and art studios, the majority of which focus on contemporary art. The Rubell Family Collection is housed and exhibited on 29th street, Miami, in the former Drug Enforcement Agency warehouse, now converted into more than 400,000 square metres which house 27 galleries, a research library of more than 30,000 volumes, a film and lecture theatre, a media room, a bookshop, gift shop and sculpture gardens.

The collection opened to the public in 1996, firstly through programmed tours twice or three times a week and later expanding the opening times and visits. Since the year 2000 Mark Coetzee has been director of the RFC. Coetzee was originally from Cape Town, South Africa, where he founded the Fine Art Cabinet, a non-profit making organisation for which he curated more than 60 exhibitions. He has also written extensively on the subject of art for publications such as the Mail, the Guardian, Revue Noire and the Sunday Independent. In 2004 he published ‘Not Afraid: Rubell Family Collection’, the first book to be written about the RFC. This is not a catalogue or an art history manual by any means; it is, rather, an awe-inspiring collection of images of contemporary art together with an introduction by Coetzee and including an interview with the Rubells.

The list of artists whose work can be found in the Rubell Family Collection is extensive and includes: Carl Andre, Janine Antoni, Keith Haring, Matthew Barney, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Bernd & Hilla Becher, John Baldessari, Christian Boltanski, Maurizio Cattelan, Mike Kelley, Francesco Clemente, Gregory Crewdson, Rineke Dijkstra, Marlene Dumas, Dan Flavin, Gilbert & George, Robert Gober, Félix González-Torres, Peter Halley, Damien Hirst, Donald Judd, William Kentridge, Anselm Kiefer, Jeff Koons, Paul McCarthy, Takashi Murakami, Chris Ofili, Raymond Pettibon, Richard Prince, Charles Ray, Thomas Ruff, Anri Sala, David Salle, Wilhelm Sasnal, Cindy Sherman, Gregor Schneider, Haim Steinbach, Thomas Struth, Sarah Sze, Rosemarie Trockel, Julian Schnabel, Luc Tuymans, Andy Warhol, Christopher Wool, Catherine Opie, Lisa Yuskavage, Zhang Huan, Chris Burden, Neo Rauch, Doug Aitkin, Barbara Kruber and Jason Rhoades.

Oscar García García is Graduate in History of Art at Complutense University of Madrid.

Although it seems to go against the tide, almost unseemly in the times we live in –undoubtedly characterised by an increasing trend towards digitalisation– there are still small publishing houses producing literally handmade books of artists’ work. These are usually small books which in many cases do not exceed 24 pages, but which help keep alive the joy of drawing, writing and compiling a work, without considering the market or the distribution of thousands of copies. This article constitutes the first in an occasional series dedicated to making these projects known to our readers.

Perro Verlag’s books are an excellent example of this kind of publishing, as are the editors: Visual artist, writer, exhibition organiser and editor Jo Cook (Minnesota, 1946) –living in Canada since 1969– and her partner Wesley Mulvin.

Jo Cook uses various pseudonyms, or rather heteronyms, as did Pessoa, something which she discovered after beginning this practice: Florentine Perro, the name with which she founded Perro Verlag; Bucky Fleur, the name under which she worked on various books and commissioned mail-art, and Frances Zorn as a her writer’s name. Cook produced her first artist-made book in 1991, when she went to live on Mayne Island in British Columbia (Canada). This was a book of spider drawings, of which only 20 copies were printed and given out to friends. Her next work did not appear until 1999, when she decided to abandon painting and concentrate on drawing. She felt that painting was difficult to keep up if one did not want to participate in the commercial gallery circuit. At that point, she met Jeremy Turner from Vancouver’s 536 artists’ collective. Jeremy used to wear a white T-shirt with pockets which he called his “pocket gallery”. One of the pockets was for solo exhibitions, and the other for group exhibitions. Jeremy invited Jo to produce a piece of work for his “solo exhibition pocket” and she made him a 5 x 8 cm, 32 page book. Since then, Jo Cook has continued to produce artist made books.

Perro Verlag was founded after Cook was invited in 2001 by Ed Varney to have a solo exhibition at the Comox Valley Art Gallery in British Columbia. Since then, she has begun to travel more as a result of her exhibitions. Thus, in a short space of time, she visited London, Oslo, Stockholm, Bergen, Amsterdam, Chicago, Prague and various places in Canada. In 2004 she joined the Open Space Arts Society’s advisory council, in Victoria. The director, Todd Davis, suggested she organise an exhibition of self-published books and books published by small independent publishing houses. The exhibition, (Self) Publish or Perish, was a complete success, and one of the Open Space Art Centre’s most visited exhibitions. This led her to organise another similar exhibition with artist Owen Plummer for Vancouver’s Access Artist Run Center.

Several months later, in 2005, Perro Verlag began the publication of one of its most numerous series of books to date, the Hell Passport Project, which comprises 25 volumes dedicated to mini-comics and chapbooks. Jo Cook’s initial idea was to ask 12 artists to produce books of 16 pages, literally drawing on printed books. But in order for this to work as a publication with a print run, it was necessary to standardise the format. Size chosen was 12 x 17 cm, with between 16 and 32 pages, produced from photographs of the original. Cook invited other artists she admired to participate in the project. The proposal was simple: each artist would use the pages available as he or she wished, printing would be in black and white as the most economical option, and each copy would be bound in red. Each book would be numbered and have an ISBN. There would be no editorial interference, and no deadlines. The first 10 artists agreed, and quickly became 24: Derek Beaulieu, Lisa Cinar, Mark Connery, Becky Dolen, Brandy Fedoruk, Julia Feyrer, Emily Goodden, Roy Green, Sally Ireland, Ben L. Jacques, Collin Johanson, Donato Mancini, Billy Mavreas, Wesley Mulvin, Robert Pedersen, Guinevere Pencarrick, Owen Plummer, Terry Plummer, Fiona Smyth, Scheisse Wives, Colin Upton, Ed Varney, Julie Voyce and James Whitman. The basic intention behind this series of books is to create a collection as diverse and disparate as are the artists themselves. This project came to an end recently with the publication of a special 100 copy edition of the complete set of 24 titles, which meant that each of the 2400 copies had to be printed and bound manually, one by one.

In the autumn of 2006, Cook and Mulvin discovered the Boekie Woekie bookshop in Amsterdam, where they learnt about more advanced binding techniques. Using their new skills, they have produced new titles such as Dragons of the Air and Altered Faces and Faithless Altars.

Although they do not have any long-term plans, Perro Verlag plans to publish new titles over the coming months.

The paper is alive.

Eduardo Zotes Sarmiento is a Philosophy graduate and editor of Art Signal Magazine.

Mark Lewis (1958, Hamilton, Canada) began his work as a photographer seeking, from among the wide range of possibilities offered by this art form, those images which would bring him closest to a study of nature and its connection with human life. From there, he turned to the moving image, a logical progression which many artists have made in recent years. From the “still” representation offered by photography, he clearly looked for, and asked for, more, moving on from the static as if trying to dive into the possibilities of the work and its subtext, bringing landscapes and people alive in an attempt to depict the action.

At the same time his videos, or his cinema to be exact, has not left behind this photographic touch, both in the shots he films and in the aesthetics of each of his works, and also because the end result of all of his works in this medium have more to do with photography than with filming. In many of his videos, the camera moves slowly over a determined subject, finally coming to rest as a fixed image which in many cases functions as the culmination of the work. For Michael Rush, perhaps the most knowledgeable expert on his work, “Mark Lewis enjoys the final moments… for Lewis, the end provides a certain freedom to explore what has been left behind, even when the rest of the world is heading in a different direction”.

Mark lewis, Spadina, 2006. Courtesy of the artist.

Along these lines, each video’s sequence of images appears to want to ramble through two traditional concepts of Art —the representations of time and space—, a desire frequently witnessed, with more or less success, in the works of many artists. When there was no possibility in art of moving the images in order to represent these concepts, artists superimposed the different historical moments they wished to portray in the same picture, thus conferring more prominence to the narration. For example, in scenes of Christ’s Passion different sequences are superimposed, moving the scenes closer to the spectator as the action develops. Velázquez, for example, used the narrative technique of “a picture within a picture” to recount various things at the same time, even to the extent of presenting a close up of an almost unimportant scene –the theme of the work– whilst situating the important scene –the meaning of the work– further back.

In other media, space and time are difficult concepts to define and embody, although throughout history there have been magnificent examples, as have just been mentioned. Video – and obviously, cinema – are the media par excellence here. Perhaps for this reason Lewis decided in the 90s to “dynamise” his photographic work, locating the narration of his work in the moving images of cinema.

Mark Lewis, Isosceles, 2007. Courtesy of the artist.

I refer more to cinema than to video art because Lewis’s work is closer to the former than to the latter, even on the most material and technical levels. As I said, it was in the last decade of the XX century that he began to work with moving images, recording on a single 35mm roll lasting 4 minutes. He generally continued to work within these constraints until a few years ago, when he began to experiment with other formats and durations.

But cinema is not important in his work solely for his material and technical approach, but also for the themes he tackles: he is not afraid of working on films which have already been made or themes which have already been broached, nor with the very concept of cinema and staging. This is evident in Peeping Tom (2000) (Film 35 mm colour) and Upside down Touch of Evil (1997). These films could be seen for the first time in Spain at the Remakes (2004) exhibition, on loan from the capcMusée in Bordeaux, and can be seen again at the end of 2008 at Gijon’s Centro de Cultura Antiguo Instituto de Gijón (Cultural Centre of Gijón). These works address the concept of remakes, sheltering under the wing of the appropriationism typical of postmodernism. Lewis centred on the destruction of cinema history through the selection of elements from different films, using simple techniques and traditional means. Through the use of professional actors and equipment, he reveals the essence of cinema, suggesting that this is nourished by other disciplines and allowing him, like many others, to use this medium to nourish his own work. But on certain occasions his work also seeks to do homage both to Hollywood and vanguard cinema.

Lewis has just had an exhibition in the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo (Andalusian Centre for Contemporary Art), where a series of works entitled “Films from everyday” was shown for the first time in Spain. The title is an apt definition of both this collection and of his work in general.

Rear Projection (Molly Parker), 2006 is one of the pieces exhibited at the CAAC. It is possible that this work summarises many of his interests. Lewis combines landscape and portrait, a common theme in cinema and recurrent in the work of this artist, together with photography and painting, which endows his work with the plastic character which makes it so aesthetic.

Juan-Ramón Barbancho is a curator, critic and PhD in History of Art based in Sevilla (Spain).

In photography there are directions and styles which are not limited solely to the theme, but which include the technique used, particularly when that influences the final colour. If in black and white photography it is principally the contrast which marks chromatic difference, in colour photography there is an exponential growth in chromatic possibilities. In spite of the infinite combinations, directions tend to impose themselves, and colour in photography is reduced to a monochrome which does not clash with the ruling fashion of the day, tarnishing its content.

In 2001, three books of photography by Kawauchi Rinko changed the direction of photography in Japan. His photographs, with pale colours and pastel tones, and an almost velvety texture, were best sellers among the general public and sparked off a style of photography that was rather naïf, devoid of content, visually pleasing and a little sugary. Kawauchi set the style, and hundreds of photographers have since copied his understated colours. The style is referred to by the adjective yasashi, which in Japanese can mean either simple or friendly, a semantic duality which encapsulates perfectly the character of these images. Naturally, commercial photography has adopted this style, and hundreds of businesses now use this type of gentle publicity, from famous fast food chains to car manufacturers.

It would seem at first glance that Morimoto Mie is just another of the photographers who has chosen to work in this particular style, sometimes described as feminine. There was not much contrast in her first photographs; chromatically they fell within the confines of faded, washed out colours. A range of colours which in the case of Morimoto gives her photographs a certain distance; the coldness of arctic colours with dull, worn metal tones. She first became known following the publication of her book of photographs, Studio Portrait (ed. Bijutsu, 2003). This portrayed the work of the famous artist Nara Yoshimoto, and was the result of six months spent in his studio. The tones of Nara’s paintings and sculptures bear a close resemblance to the colours in Morimoto’s first photographs. Pastel colours shape Nara’s personal universe of manga aesthetics, and Morimoto availed herself of them in order to discreetly document Nara’s working methodology from a perspective of respect, but also distance. Later came a commission for a book of photographs of the then almost unknown actress, Ito Misaki (ed. Little More, 2004). A book revealing rather more conventional aesthetics, which in some ways reflected the personality of the person portrayed: pale colours emphasising her innocent fragility. Ultimately, a book made to order.

Apart from her work commitments, that same year Morimoto presented her series of photographs, “Slicer”. An exhibition and a self-published book in which colour contrasts began to emerge from the mist of blurred colours, with somewhat understated tones but elegant and distinctive nevertheless. Unique colours far from the flat digitalisation which invades contemporary photography, springing from a chromatic palette exuding chemistry and fixatives. Later, she received another commission. A book of photographs of the artist and model Kimura Kaera (ed. Rockin’on, 2007), where Morimoto gave free rein to extravagant and forced colour combinations, very much in keeping with Kimura’s character. Although Morimoto left her signature on these photographs, opting for muted colours –an unusual option for chromatic exaltation– this commission represents an exception. Her other work, both for magazines and for galleries, continues to show the mixture of blurred colour which at times achieves a hardness never occasioned by the dizziness of exalted colour. These characteristics of her work have gained her recognition, and led to her first retrospective in the Graf Media GM gallery (Osaka, 2007).

In Morimoto’s work, colour is an element of aesthetic pleasure, which serves to define the landscape and characterise shape. Photographs of everyday scenes where the camera does not intrude, but rather limits its role to the narration of the lives of people unaware of the crystalline eye of the lens. Objects take on importance, posing in a rehearsed geometric choreography with icy indifference. There is no abuse of macro-photography as in the work of Kawauchi, nor optical tricks to distract our attention. Nearby details are blurred, just as they are when we try to focus on something less than three centimetres away from our eyes. For Morimoto, the camera is not an instrument to free us from our optical limitations, but another human eye with all its imperfections. Landscapes and shapes are shown as they are, from a perspective which only differs from that of the human eye by its rectangular frame. A gaze which flees from many of the labels and clichés of contemporary Japanese photography, and offers a universal, and at the same time intimate, perspective.

Jorge Larrañaga is an art critic and freelance photographer based in Tokyo (Japan).

Stanley Wong, also known by his artistic name Anothermountainman, was born in 1960 in the unique region that is Hong Kong. In 1980 he graduated in Graphic Design, and after working for five years in this field, he moved on to advertising where for the past 15 years, most of his professional work has been focused. However, Wong firmly believes that the frontiers between the commercial and the artistic can be crossed with ease. The skill and intelligence that he brings to the competitive arena of advertising has led him to occupy the post of director in renowned advertising agencies throughout the Asian Pacific; at the same time he has not neglected his passion for photography and fine art, and his production in this area has been recognised through numerous prizes and exhibitions. He is also a member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale (the famous association of graphic designers in Zurich, Switzerland).

The four photographs included below belong to the Lanwei series, taken by this photographer in the Guanghzou region in 2006. The author explains the context surrounding the photographs thus: in 1980, the Chinese government relaxed existing restrictions and opened its doors to foreign investment. This caused a boom in the building industry, which in many cases was a cover for corruption. When the bubble finally burst, many buildings were abandoned half-finished. In Chinese, these buildings are called “lan wei lou” (烂楼), lan meaning “in ruins”, and lou, “buildings”. Wong says, “These photographs attempt to capture the relics of that mad gold fever. At the same time, over the years the meaning of “lan wei” has extended beyond the original reference to building projects to include all aspects of life”.

In this series, we witness four takes on present day China, against the convulsive background of her recent history. This context is reflected in the life experiences of the three generations coexisting in the present: the oldest generation, which during the XX century witnessed the move from an agricultural to an urban society (not forgetting that China still has a huge rural population), the generation responsible for modernisation, but also for the uncontrolled excesses which frequently accompany abrupt change, and the younger generation trying to make its way in this society, respecting and at the same time, modifying certain values, in a kind of accelerated schizophrenia.

Wong produces his work with the precision of a specialist –as advertising artists are-, communicating with clarity, ostensibly through the elements making up the composition: the financier, the strong box, children’s games, globes, lamps or domestic items. Nothing is left to chance, and his images reveal their underlying traumas and allusions, and the history which endows them with meaning.

Jan Cornelius is a freelance writer and photographer based in Barcelona (Spain).