Lenz publishes books on contemporary art, photography, architecture and design.
Our imprint includes catalogues, monographs, theory and artist books.
Christian Frosi was long considered one of the most inspiring and promising Italian artists debuting in the early 2000s. That is until just over ten years into his career, when he decided to make himself unreachable and remove himself from art history, its customs and figures.
Featuring new contributions by Sitara Abuzar Ghaznawi and a wealth of commissioned texts and writings, this book is conceived as a continuation of the exhibition held at Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich and, in a modified form, at Swiss Institute, New York.
In a context in which institutions are facing a surge of public scrutiny, the publication revisits the artistic practice of institutional critique to ask what it means today, and to consider its ability to respond to the urgent social, political, and economic issues of our time.
Covering the past thirty years of Scott’s practice, this monograph offers the largest comprehensive selection of paintings, drawings, masks and architectural models, as well as an unique insight on his creative and transformative approach.
A first monograph on Shahryar Nashat, generously illustrated with color photographs of the artist’s work and new scholarly contributions. Published in conjunction with two solo exhibitions, at Kunsthalle Basel and Swiss Institute in New York.
The first reference monograph dedicated to the artist and audio investigator, this book analyzes a practice that has been consistently exploring ‘the politics of listening’ and the role of sound and voice within the law and human rights.
Edited by Julia Marchand, in collaboration with Vittoria Morpurgo
Texts by Morgan Labar, Julia Marchand, Julie Ackermann, Anya Harrison, Giulia Mariachiara Galiano and Cecilia Larese, Vittoria Morpurgo and Robin Plus, Gaia Vincensini, Raphaëlle Serre, Linda Voorwinde, Tohé Commaret, Louise Nicolas de Lamballerie, Caroline Poggi, Jonathan Vinel, Kevin Blinderman, Mohamed Bourouissa, Michal Novotný, Laura Owens, Magda Szpecht, Thomas Liu Le Lann, Velvet Aubry, Arnaud Dezoteux, Prune Phi, Alban Diaz, Ant łakomsk, Liselor Perez, Francesca Grilli, Camille Aleña, Joanna Kordjak, Katarzyna Kołodziej-Podsiadło
Designed by Lorenzo Mason Studio
2026, English, softcover, 11 x 18.5 cm, 160 pages
ISBN 979-12-80579-89-8
Why be the object when you can dive into yourself and archive your own adolescence? And what about this adolescence when it lasts until the late thirties, and expands beyond the traditional understanding of age group?
This volume redefines the coming-of-age genre by addressing the contours of the obsession with the prolonged teenager years. Contemporary art views adolescence as a mental state, a condition that has eroded the traditional markers of the passage into adulthood; not a transitory phase but a prolonged mode of being or even a critique of a world that itself refuses to stabilize.
Extramentale, a curatorial platform on teenage aesthetics, was founded by Julia Marchand, the editor of this book, which spans the period from the platform’s creation in 2016 through to its eventual closure in 2026. It gave voice to artist-adolescents and author-adolescents, mainly millennials and Gen Zers.
The essays by Julia Marchand and Julie Ackermann examine manifestations of adolescence that draw on gaming, hypersensitivity, and intermediate states of consciousness as a perceptive resource and where contradictory attitudes shape the many dimensions of today’s artists-adolescents. Anya Harrison, with her incisive critical voice, explores moral panics and literary extremity in a time when society’s fetishization of adolescence continues to generate intense debates. Giulia Mariachiara Galiano, writing from her perspective as a Venice-based curator, traces the limits and contours of the “girl online,” reflecting on digital subjectivities staged out by artists of her generation. Morgan Labar argues that adolescence as the territory of our concerns is no longer the preserve of masculine compulsions of infantile provocations; Labar, author of In Praise of Dumbness: Regression and Superficiality in the Arts Since the Late 1980s (Les Presses du réel), also signs the foreword to this anthology.
Adolescent artists of the Extramentale program and beyond contributed to this publication by sharing their words on the many dimensions of the adolescence: Robin Plus, Gaia Vincensini, Raphaëlle Serre, Linda Voorwinde, Tohé Commaret, Louise Nicolas de Lamballerie, Caroline Poggi, Jonathan Vinel, Kevin Blinderman, Mohamed Bourouissa, Michal Novotný, Laura Owens, Magda Szpecht, Thomas Liu Le Lann, Velvet Aubry, Arnaud Dezoteux, Prune Phi, Alban Diaz, Ant Łakomsk, Liselor Perez, Francesca Grilli, Camille Aleña, Joanna Kordjak, and Katarzyna Kołodziej-Podsiadło; interviewed by Venice-based researchers Cecilia Larese, Vittoria Morpurgo, and Julia Marchand.
