Lenz publishes books on contemporary art, photography, architecture and design.
Our imprint includes catalogues, monographs, theory and artist books.
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.
Martin Heidegger, Glenn Gould, Jacques-Louis David, Cy Twombly, Paul Engelmann and Ludwig Wittgenstein: characters that Francesco Arena has chosen or rediscovered in multiple contexts over the time recur in this book. Ranging from philosophy, to music, to visual arts, they embrace the whole world of knowledge.
This first institutional monograph on the multimedia practice of artist and director Ali Cherri aims to highlight the themes and formal concerns running through his most recent, highly significant projects at GAMeC, Bergamo; Frac Bretagne, Rennes; Swiss Institute, New York; Biennale Arte 2022, Venice; and the National Gallery, London.
The book highlights the main characteristics of the collective trauma that gave rise to Rachel Whiteread’s project for GAMeC. The psychoanalysts Angelo Antonio Moroni and Pietro Roberto Goisis map out a composite picture, starting from the sense of vulnerability and collective loss associated with the Covid-19 pandemic.
Edited by Fabian Schöneich
Texts by Carina Bukuts, Adam Jasper, Nora N. Khan, Dieter Roelstraete, Fabian Schöneich, and Carmen Van Pamel
With a conversation between Elena Filipovic and Raphael Hefti
Copublished with Kunsthalle Basel
Designed by Maximage
2021, English / German, hardcover, 19 x 27 cm, 340 pages
ISBN 978-88-945353-0-3
The first comprehensive monograph on the work of Swiss artist Raphael Hefti is published on the occasion of his major solo exhibition in 2020 at Kunsthalle Basel. With a career spanning over a decade, Hefti is celebrated for upending and disrupting—seemingly ordinary—industrial and post-industrial processes. Hefti’s intimate encounters with materials take form in colossal sculptures, performances that (at times) flirt with the brink of disaster, and sprawling public interventions. Often operating under the light of Murphy’s Law, he unveils everyday things so well hidden in plain sight (and turns the principles of minimalism on their head).
This richly illustrated volume captures the artist‘s complete body of work through his process of making in factories across Europe to their installation in museums and galleries. With contributions from a diverse cast of authors—a philosopher, a science-fiction writer, and an art historian among others—Hefti‘s material transformations come to life in saturated words and images that tell stories of error, risk and wonder (from the scale of the particle to the universe at large).
Every copy of this book is unique. The distribution of pigments is the result of their manipulation during screen printing, and no two covers are alike. Printed by the artist in collaboration with Atelier für Siebdruck, Lorenz Boegli, Müntschemier, CH.
Raphael Hefti (*1978 Boudevilliers, CH) first apprenticed as an electronics engineer. He went on to study photography at ECAL, Lausanne and fine art at the Slade School of Fine Art, London, where he graduated with a Master’s degree. His work has been exhibited at the following institutions, among others: Kunsthalle Basel; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Liverpool Biennale; Fondation Vincent van Gogh Arles; Nottingham Contemporary; CAPC musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux and Camden Art Centre, London. A presentation of his work at the Guggenheim Bilbao is planned for this year. Hefti lives and works in Zurich.