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.
Concept by Vela Arbutina and Anna Franceschini
Edited by Attilia Fattori Franchini, Anna Franceschini, and Ilaria Gianni
Texts by Chiara Agradi, Mohamed Almusibli, Fabio Cherstich, Liv Cuniberti, Gioia Dal Molin, Bernardo De Souza, Vincenzo di Rosa, Attilia Fattori Franchini, Francesco Urbano Ragazzi, Ilaria Gianni, Ingrid Luquet-Gad, Beniamino Marini, Nick Mauss, Giacomo Mercuriali, Alice Motard, Tabea Panizzi, Tobias Perse, Jennifer Teets, Roberta Tenconi, Jeppe Ugelvig, Joel Valabrega, Marianna Vecellio
Designed by Vela Arbutina
2026, English, softcover, 19 x 26 cm, 176 pages
ISBN 979-12-82771-02-3
Machines Wear Costumes is Anna Franceschini’s first monograph, bringing together works made between 2007 and 2025. Rather than a chronological account, the publication offers an in-depth look at the artist’s oeuvre through a specialized lexicon. This glossary is organized around six core entries—Animation, Body, Machine, Ghost, Desire, and Window—which are further articulated in subentries that refine their meaning in relation to the artist’s work. Newly commissioned texts by Mohamed Almusibli, Attilia Fattori Franchini, Ilaria Gianni, Ingrid Luquet-Gad, Jeppe Ugelvig, and Marianna Vecellio are expanded by a constellation of quotations from previously published texts to offer a composite yet coherent interpretation.
Indebted in structure to Walter Benjamin’s Das Passagen‑Werk, and in visual approach to Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas, the book favors juxtaposition and recurrence over linear narrative, mirroring Franceschini’s own practice of repetition, rotation, and animation. By resisting a fixed reading order, the volume invites an open and recursive engagement, functioning as a “desiring machine,” activated anew through each act of looking and reading.
Machines Wear Costumes has been promoted by Kunstverein Gartenhaus and supported by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture under the Italian Council program (13th edition, 2024).
Photos: Nicola Gnesi