Allan McCollum

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Mark Richard Leach and Barbara J. Bloemink

This volume presents two decades of Michael Lucero's glazed ceramic, bronze, and mixed media sculptures, including such series as the Dreamers, Pre-Columbus, New World, and Reclamations. While at first glance his work appears to be a vigorous example of contemporary ceramic sculpture with a background in 1960s California art and a foreground in New York eclecticism, in fact his figurative forms borrow liberally and wittily from the history of art of various cultures, including pre-Columbian, Native American, European, Afro-Carolinian, and the vernacular and popular media. The imagery that slides in and out of the complex glazes of this master of the ceramic medium is art about art and about self. The consistent strength of the work comes from a fusion of ceramic tradition with sculptural innovation, and from a combination of extraordinarily fine technique, keen wide-ranging intelligence, and the resonance brought to bear by past associations, cultures, and use.

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Ingrid Schaffner and Matthias Winzen

"This publication documents the importance of collecting and packaging, storing, and archiving as a contemporary artistic strategy. It lends surprising insight into the process of creating art, which itself is a result of collecting experiences and materials, by using the work of forty internationally celebrated artists as examples." "In Deep Storage, these archives of materials become works of art themselves. The documentation and exhibition of these extreme departures from conventional forms of collection and recollection is a stunning project in the avant-garde tradition." "In accordance with its subject matter, this book is organized like a storage file of information, in which the broad spectrum of artistic contributions and essays and texts by twenty-five authors is presented alphabetically."

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Theodora Vischer and Heidi Naef

"Jeff Wall's large color transparencies set forth an imposing and seductive pictorial world. Ranging from the gritty realism of the city street to bizarre flights of fantasy, his photographs have won him wide recognition as one of the most adventurous and accomplished artists of the past three decades. This book accompanies a major retrospective jointly organized in 2007 by Peter Galassi, Chief Curator of Photography, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Neal Benezra, Director, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Between showings in New York and San Francisco, the show visits The Art Institute of Chicago." "Born in 1946 in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he lives and works, Jeff Wall has charted an ambitious and unique path through the maze of contemporary art, drawing upon such diverse resources as Conceptual art, Neorealist cinema, philosophy, literature, critical theory, modernist photography, and the venerable tradition of European painting. The exhibition includes all of his major works to date, which are reproduced here along with several very recent pictures and a generous selection of artistic sources, cousins, and echoes. The latter are illustrations to Galassi's essay, which sketches the breadth and originality of Wall's artistic and intellectual universe and challenges conventional interpretations of his development and achievement. The book also includes an interview with the artist by James Rondeau, Frances & Thomas Dittmer Chairman, Department of Contemporary Art, The Art Institute of Chicago."--Jacket.

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Nari Ward

The Jamaican-born, Harlem-based artist Nari Ward makes sculpture out of everyday objects that weave together culture, history, and personal narrative. His work often deals with social and historical themes such as slavery, oppression, and dislocation. He has participated in the Whitney Biennial, been Artist-in-Residence at the Walker Art Center and the Studio Museum in Harlem, and has received an NEA Grant and a Guggenheim Fellowship. This book presents new work made for an exhibition in Torino, Italy.