Lenz publishes books on contemporary art, photography, architecture and design.
Our imprint includes catalogues, monographs, theory and artist books.
This compelling artist’s book is built around KOOL (“cabbage” in Dutch), an original font designed by Reus, somewhere between a plant alphabet and concrete poetry. The publication draws on the type specimen book tradition to present new typefaces.
Through a rich selection of images, this artist’s book, published in two editions—gold and silver—explores the birth, life and death of Francesco Gennari’s work Vorrei perdermi e non trovarmi più, 2022, exhibited for the first time at the Ciaccia Levi Gallery in Paris.
Through a rich selection of images, this artist’s book, published in two editions—gold and silver—explores the birth, life and death of Francesco Gennari’s work Vorrei perdermi e non trovarmi più, 2022, exhibited for the first time at the Ciaccia Levi Gallery in Paris.
This richly illustrated publication combines artwork, archival and process imagery, and includes an extended interview with the artist, as well as new essays by key thinkers in the fields of anthropology, philosophy, political economy and art history.
In the first monograph on the feminist conceptual artist collective Claire Fontaine, political theorist and somatic practitioner Anita Chari explores the artist’s theoretical and political innovations to illuminate a more haptic, embodied approach to the practice of critical theory.
Shahryar Nashat inserts his art in the pages of this new artist’s book, which takes the form of a catalogue-turned-manual: but instead of explaining its meaning, he strips it of its aura, flaunts its nature as an object and describes step-by-step how to create it.
Edited by Andrea Bellini
Texts by Andrea Bellini, Lorraine Mendes, Antonio Obá, Larry Ossei-Mensah
Designed by Lorenzo Mason Studio
2025, English, hardcover, 24 x 30 cm, 224 pages
ISBN 979-12-80579-74-4
Antonio Obá: Rituals of Care traces the practice of the Brazilian artist from 2016 to the present, offering a broad survey of his recent work, dwelling on the recurring motifs and iconographic sources that feed the complex imagery of his painting. Extensively illustrated, the book returns the richness of Obá’s paintings, with enlargements on some of the details woven into the pictorial texture that, in addition to showing his masterful technique, make certain elements of his visual vocabulary stand out.
The conversation between Andrea Bellini and Antonio Obá that opens the book offers the opportunity to learn, through the artist’s voice, about the key passages of his research, and to examine his diverse cultural references—from the Baroque of Minas Gerais to traditional Chinese painting, from Rembrandt to the Catholic ex-votos—until we discover the Obá’s civic vocation, of painting as a spiritual practice.
The two essays commissioned for the occasion analyze the complexity of these layered signifiers. Lorraine Mendes’s essay “Every Boy Is a King” offers an in-depth analysis of Obá’s religious syncretism. It suggests an interpretation of its layered symbols, particularly the sankofa and the deity Exú, both of which pay tribute to the artist’s West African roots. Above and beyond the specific cultural contexts of this iconography, the author emphasizes the universal value of Obá’s work, its evocative, transformative, dynamic power, which—like music or dance—knows no national boundaries or barriers.
Larry Ossei-Mensah’s essay “Embodiment: The Art of Antonio Obá” investigates the complex cultural legacy that is intertwined with the artist’s practice, connected to his Afro-Brazilian roots, to the social and political realities of the Black diaspora, and to Christian, Candomblé, and Umbanda traditions. In addition to examining the context in which Obá’s work is rooted, the author situates it within a galaxy of artists who have focused on questions of identity, often using their own bodies as tools of social and cultural critique.
Completing the book is a chronology, compiled by Sara De Chiara, tracing the artist’s formative years and exhibition history, accompanied by rich documentary materials.
The book is published on the occasion of Antonio Obá: Rituals of Care, the first mid-career survey in Europe dedicated to the Brazilian artist, curated by Andrea Bellini, at the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève.
Photos: Nicola Gnesi