Lenz publishes books on contemporary art, photography, architecture and design.
Our imprint includes catalogues, monographs, theory and artist books.
Full Rotation brings together texts and images to trace the forces that draw bodies beyond themselves. Moving between ecstasy, animal life, and light, the book explores heightened sensation, altered perception, and dissolution, where the human gives way to other forms of existence and boundaries between the physical, psychic, and cosmic begin to blur.
This is the first monograph on the influential American choreographer and dancer Trajal Harrell. In an entertaining, far-reaching conversation with curator Daniel Baumann, Harrell covers all of his choreographies and performances, as well as his influences, successes, and failures, addressing how he transforms and transgresses the history of dance.
Maxiprocesso brings together 360 photographs by Maria D. Rapicavoli, one for each of the archival folders documenting the largest mafia trial in history, held in Palermo from 1986 to 1987. The volume explores the relationship between memory, justice, and social responsibility, examining the material element of a landmark event in contemporary Italian history.
This book offers the first comprehensive overview of Anna Franceschini’s practice. Organized around recurring themes, it explores animation, the body, machines, ghosts, desire, and windows through commissioned contributions and selected writings. Its associative structure reflects her interest in repetition, transformation, and unstable images.
This book accompanies 5 Works, Lydia Ourahmane’s first institutional solo show in Italy, staged at the Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation in Venice and curated by Polly Staple, during the 61st Venice Biennale, and includes newly commissioned texts and images that further contextualize the artist’s practice and work.
Museums of Tears extends Francesco Vezzoli’s 2024 exhibition at Museo Correr, Venice, combining historical works and new commissions to explore antiquity, emotion and illusion. Conceived as an artist’s book rather than a catalogue, it transforms the museum guide into a hybrid archive and portable museum of memory, beauty and mourning.
Edited and with an essay by Pavel Pyś
Designed by Lorenzo Mason Studio
2024, English, softcover, 22 x 28 cm
ISBN: 979-12-80579-49-2
Conceived as a catalogue and an artist’s book, the publication was made on occasion of the eponymous 2022 exhibition at Indipendenza Roma. Deeply responsive to the space, the exhibition brought together works by Louise Lawler and Fredrik Værslev to explore the tension between an artwork and its surrounding architectural context, spurring questions of taste, value, function, and decoration.
Louise Lawler’s incisive practice brings to the fore the very means by which value and significance are conferred upon artworks. Her critical strategies reveal the mechanisms by which art is produced, reproduced, consumed to question how we understand issues of authorship, connoisseurship, and meaning. Through emblematic interventions belonging to the series Tracings (2013-present), Adjusted to fit (2010-present), and Paperweights (1988-present) within Indipendenza’s rooms, that once served as an apartment, Lawler’s works draw our attention to how we organize and present our lives to others.
Deeply invested in the relationship between painting, architecture, and both urban and suburban environments, Fredrik Værslev’s serial practice reflects on the conventions, styles, and limits of abstract painting. For this exhibition, Værslev has created a series of site-responsive paintings (2021-22), which are sized to match the doorway dimensions and informed by the palette, materials, texture, and imagery that characterize Indipendenza’s spaces. These trompe l’oeil terrazzo paintings mimic the pattern and treatment of the gallery floor designs, yet are marked with drips and swirls suggestive of the ceiling frescoes that interrupt the all-over treatment, playing on the tension between background and foreground, function and decoration, real and faux.
Seen together, works by Lawler and Værslev point beyond their own limits, drawing our eyes to their surrounding spaces, asking how an artwork’s context can frame its meaning and vice versa.
Photos: Lorenzo Mason Studio