With her refined sense of political and social contexts, the contemporary painter Aliza Nisenbaum focuses on her colorful portraits of socially and politically underrepresented groups. For example, she portrayed undocumented immigrants from Mexico and Central America, whom she first met while teaching English. Her approach comprises very personal explorations of the people she portrays; she visits them at home, meets their families, and cooks for them. This close relationship—the collaboration between painter and model—results in paintings whose unusual intimacy and expressive power are captivating. The first monograph about this promising artist now provides a comprehensive overview of her work from the most recent decade.

Aliza Nisenbaum (*1977, Mexico City) studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2017 she took part in the Whitney Biennial and showed her work at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. She lives in New York City.

Exhibition:
Anton Kern Gallery, New York
12.9.–2.11.2019

The American artist Alice Neel (1900–1984) is acknowledged as one of the most important figurative painters in the history of American art in the twentieth century. Operating during a period of revolutionary abstraction, she took her own radical position by adopting a particular, idiosyncratic formal language, but always keeping an aim towards establishing “the truth” in her psychologically penetrating paintings. Neel portrays the anxieties and frailties of the human race in a period of unprecedented political, social and technological change.

The exhibition catalogue presents around seventy paintings. The authors review Alice Neel’s artistic development over approximately sixty years, and set out the history of her oeuvre's reception, her relationship to twentieth century photography, her position in relation to second-wave feminism and her personal interest in early twentieth century European art. This survey conveys Neel's fresh impression of America at a time of cultural and artistic transition.

Where are all of the women in the avant-garde electronic music scene? Anyone who thinks they do not exist is totally wrong. It is, however, a fact that hardly anyone has done any research on them or written about them. Wondering about a world allegedly lacking in female electronic musicians, Elisabeth Schimana began a search in the late 1990s and the initial results of her research went into her performance Portrait 01 – Die Futuristin (Portrait 01 – the female futurists). Her research brought her into the sphere of electronic music, which culminated in the founding of the IMA – Institute for Media Archaeology. Now, this publication presents twenty female artists and their work. The artists create a somewhat different picture of the creation and development of electronic music. This illustrated volume is as intriguing as it is fascinating, and, above all, a significant portrait of this new history.

The musician and composer ELISABETH SCHIMANA (*1958, Innsbruck) is herself one of the pioneers of electronic music. She is the founder of the IMA, or Institut für Medienarchäologie (Institute for Media Archaeology), which has been devoted since 2005 to acoustic media involved in both analogue and digital, as well as the themes of women, art, and technology.

FESTIVAL
Lentos Kunstmuseum, Linz
September 6–30, 2018

The Deutsche Bank Towers, the Frankfurt headquarters of the international corporation, have been modernized, and the complex’s art concept, which caused a furor when the first occupants moved into buildings in the eighties, is being updated and internationalized. While in the past the collection concentrated primarily on postwar German art, in the future it will encompass works by about ninety artists from more than thirty different countries. Visitors to the towers will join an art expedition through Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe. Wangechi Mutu, Mike Bouchet, Cao Fei, Adrian Paci, and Anette Kelm are just a few of the major figures whose drawings and photographs will be presented here.

This volume presents about two hundred highlights from the collection and provides insight into the newly designed towers, which are exemplary for the Deutsche Bank’s commitment to global art. At the same time, works by many previously unknown artists will open up a panorama of international contemporary art. (German edition ISBN 978-3-7757-2776-1)

Exhibition schedule: Deutsche Bank Towers in Frankfurt am Main

The white rabbit and his pocket watch, the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter, and naturally, Alice herself—the characters and absurd, cryptic puns of Lewis Carroll long ago made Alice in Wonderland a favorite book for every age group. Artists have also been inspired by the fantastical, imaginative, yet savage tale, and since the book was first published in 1865, there have been many works of art based on it. This book presents some of the most nuanced, starting with the original illustrations by John Tenniel, and going on to works by Max Ernst, René Magritte, Salvador Dalí, and other Surrealists, as well as art from the 1960s, all the way to contemporary works by Anna Gaskell and Kiki Smith or large installations by Stephan Huber and Pipilotti Rist. This bibliophile’s volume confirms and illuminates the uninterrupted relevance of this literary creation.

Exhibition schedule: Hamburger Kunsthalle, June 22–September 30, 2012

One of the most prominent artists of her generation Berlin-based Alicja Kwade (*1979, Katowice, Poland) has garnered international attention during the last decade, securing herself a leading position on the international contemporary art scene. 

In Aporie is the first monograph on Kwade covering a wide range of her intriguing works. Being ‘In Aporie’ is to be in a state where an insoluble theoretical problem allows for the paradoxical knowledge of one's own ignorance. From early on in her career, Kwade was never afraid to ponder complicated scientific and mathematical questions in her objects, sculptures, and installations, such as probability calculation, astronomical wormholes, the endless universe, and parallel realities. And these complex ideas and theories continue to fuel her artistic practice and drive. Besides many images of her work, the monograph features articles by Danish experts on her work.

Exhibitions:
21.9.2018–17.2.2019, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen
10.10.2018–28.4.2019, EMMA – ESPOO MUSEUM OF MODERN ART

Since the beginning of China’s economic boom in the late 1980s and its ever-increasing influence on globalized society, the country’s burgeoning contemporary art scene has attracted great attention around the world. However, despite the Chinese art market’s emergence as a highly prolific industry and a growing international recognition of contemporary art from China, there is a remarkable lack of Chinese women artists represented in (inter-)national exhibitions and publications. Stepping Out! is the first comprehensive publication in 25 years to present a broadly representative selection of the work of contemporary Chinese female artists, including pioneering as well as emerging artists thus far little-known abroad. Through an enormous wealth of perspectives, the artists reveal their personal and social fears, contradictions, and hopes in the tense field occupied by powerful tradition, and shed light upon the search for identity both as women and as artists within a rapidly changing Chinese society.

Stepping Out! features more than 100 artworks by 26 artists born between 1960 and 1994 living in mainland China, including Cao Fei, Lin Tianmiao, Luo Yang, Ma Qiusha, Tong Wenmin, Wen Hui, Xiao Lu, Xing Danwen, and Yin Yiuzhen.

Glaciers, volcanoes, and caves—places of solitude, tranquility, and melancholy. At the same time places of tremendous sublimity. Since 2004, the Swiss photographer Bernd Nicolaisen (*1959 in Aarberg) has been drawn time after time to Iceland, the land of glaciers and geysers. Equipped with a large-format camera, he sets out on fascinating expeditions deep into the bowels of glacial caves in search of fabulous images. Neither man nor animal has ever set foot in or their eyes on the frigid halls of mirrors, in which the space is dominated solely by bizarre ice and rock formations that magically refract the light. Viewed from a distance, Nicolaisen’s photographs gain form and depth, while up close they disintegrate into crystalline structures. Due to the extreme light conditions, the residual light that penetrates into the caves, each of the images in the catalogue takes readers on a truly spectacular discovery tour.