Denise Markonish

Known for installations exploring science, natural phenomena, and contemporary mythologies, French artist Laurent Grasso presents a visual journey of his avant-garde, conceptual work.Drawing on the visual possibilities of electromagnetic energy, radio waves, and natural phenomena, French conceptual artist Laurent Grasso explores their effect on our perception via immersive videos, sculptures, paintings, and drawings that resort to images or techniques borrowed from cinema or art history. At the crossroads of heterogeneous temporalities, geographies, and realities, his installations play with shifting viewpoints, boundaries between fiction and reality, and unusual perspectives.This tome explores the artist’s manipulations of what we perceive to be time’s consistency, showcasing artworks merging a wide range of interests, including scientific speculations and fictions; natural catastrophes; and representations of power and authority. This questioning of time appears in Grasso’s Studies into the Past paintings, created using historically accurate techniques, which reconstruct our perception of the reality of another era to create a “false historical memory.” Vibrant photographs display his unique pieces, while astute observations from some of the world’s foremost art critics offer insight into Grasso’s approach.

Nick Cave's "Soundsuits"-exuberant, brightly colored wearable sculptures adorned with buttons, hair, toys and other found objects-have made him one of the best-known contemporary artists. This book documents his most extensive work to date, turning his art inside out. Until fills MASS MoCA's football field- sized gallery, without a single Soundsuit to be found. Instead Cave takes us inside the belly of one of his iconic sculptures with an immersive environment populated by a dazzling array of found objects, echoing some of Cave's and America's most confounding dilemmas: gun violence, racial inequality, injustice within our cities' police departments, and death. An installation diary and numerous images reveal how an idea becomes reality. Until also incorporates special appearances by dancers, singer/ songwriters, and poets, as well as community forums, and opportunities for public debate and engagement. Transcripts of the first of these events accompany the book's illustrations. This book features an essay by exhibition Curator Denise Markonish, commentary by David Byrne and Lori E.Lightfoot that contextualizes Cave's work against today's headlines, and an excerpt from Claudia Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric. Powerful and transformative, Until promises to take its place among the era's most important artistic statements.Published in association with MASS MoCA

Trenton Doyle Hancock has transformed his childhood love of comic books, toys, and superhero culture into his own creation myth. That mythology and the fascinating, multimedia iterations that it has sparked are told in this captivating and revealing book. Accompanied by images of his paintings, drawings, and installations alongside pictures of his own vast toy and pop- culture collections as well as pages from his forthcoming graphic novel, the artist traces the birth of the Mounds and Vegans—the plants and mutants that are forever at war—through which he explores good, evil, authority, race, moral relativism, and religion. Hancock takes readers inside his largest exhibition yet at MASS MoCA—a multi-media installation that blends sculpture, painting, and installations to bring the Mounds’ world to life. Included in this book are contributions by the exhibition curator Denise Markonish, an art historical essay about Hancock’s paintings, and illuminating conversations between Hancock and some of his influences, including Frank Oz. With this book, Hancock merges his personal history with his imagination to create a rich panoply of color, image, and language.

In an age of national divisiveness, artists are creating moments of political resistance while also trying to forge paths towards reconciliation. This exciting and provocative collection shows how fifteen US-based multi-disciplinary artists are addressing the complexity of the 21st century. Jeffrey Gibson weaves together European and Native American cultures; Performance artist Cassils constructs images of resistance in the Trans community; Hayv Kahraman examines diasporic culture and the effect of being a refugee in America. Together these artists create a national collective portrait of a country at odds. This book examines the human condition from all sides and strives to show how acting together against suffering can lead to a new version of realness.