Kirjahaku

In this book, Dan Adler addresses recent tendencies in contemporary art toward assemblage sculpture and how these works incorporate tainted materials – often things left on the side of the road, according to the logic and progress of the capitalist machine – and combine them in ways that allow each element to retain a degree of empirical specificity. Adler develops a range of aesthetic models through which these practices can be understood to function critically. Each chapter focuses on a single exhibition: Isa Genzken’s "OIL" (German Pavilion, Venice Biennale, 2007), Geoffrey Farmer’s midcareer survey (Musée d’art contemporain, Montréal, 2008), Rachel Harrison’s "Consider the Lobster" (CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art, 2009), and Liz Magor’s "The Mouth and Other Storage Facilities" (Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, 2008).

The first book-length study of Nakanishi Natsuyuki’s sculptural practice, this volume explores his assemblages in dialogue with the postwar history of sculpture as a global phenomenon in the 1960s and beyond. Nakanishi’s series of Compact Objects (produced from 1962 to 1968) allow for a reconsideration of the role of assemblage within cultural tendencies of the postwar and contemporary periods, both within and without Japan. This role forefronts the concepts of intimacy and interactivity—as well as ritual and process—within the context of sculptural experience. Nakanishi’s critique of consumerism and conformity within these works—along with his experimentation with new plastic technologies—allows for a comparative treatment that includes a variety of movements and tendencies in Japan, Europe, and the US, including Minimalism, Fluxus, Neo-Dada, and Nouveau réalisme, among others. The final portions of the book offer a wider and global context of postwar and contemporary tendencies toward assemblage, including an in-depth study of a multisensory exhibition by Yuko Mohri, held at the Venice Biennale in 2024. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, contemporary art, and Japanese studies.

In this book, Dan Adler addresses recent tendencies in contemporary art toward assemblage sculpture and how these works incorporate tainted materials – often things left on the side of the road, according to the logic and progress of the capitalist machine – and combine them in ways that allow each element to retain a degree of empirical specificity. Adler develops a range of aesthetic models through which these practices can be understood to function critically. Each chapter focuses on a single exhibition: Isa Genzken’s "OIL" (German Pavilion, Venice Biennale, 2007), Geoffrey Farmer’s midcareer survey (Musée d’art contemporain, Montréal, 2008), Rachel Harrison’s "Consider the Lobster" (CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art, 2009), and Liz Magor’s "The Mouth and Other Storage Facilities" (Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, 2008).

An illustrated study of Hanne Darboven's masterwork, the massive Kulturgeschichte 1880-1983 (Cultural History 1880-1983).Hanne Darboven's Kulturgeschichte 1880-1983 (Cultural History 1880-1983) (1980-1983) is an overwhelming and encyclopedic installation consisting of 1,590 works on paper and 19 sculptural objects. The work weaves together cultural, social, and historical references with autobiographical documents, postcards, pinups of film and rock stars, documentary references to the first and second world wars, geometric diagrams for textile weaving, a sampling of New York doorways, illustrated covers from news magazines, the contents of an exhibition catalogue devoted to postwar European and American art, a kitschy literary calendar, and extracts from some of Darboven's earlier works. The panels are sequenced and grouped, with the groups then juxtaposed in arrangements that often seem little more than chance associations. In his illustrated walk through Darboven's massive work, Dan Adler explores its visual and aesthetic complexities and considers the work in relation to various projects undertaken by European artists in the 1960s-including Gerhard Richter's ongoing Atlas. The work is now permanently installed at Dia: Beacon.