Nicholas Baume

A documentation and critical examination of Sol LeWitt's influential Incomplete Open Cubes.
With essays by Nicholas Baume, Jonathan Flatley, and Pamela M. Lee. Begun in 1974, Incomplete Open Cubes is a sophisticated and elaborate expression of conceptualist art-making by Sol LeWitt, one of the most influential abstract artists of his generation. No other serial project by LeWitt or his contemporaries embodies with such eloquence so many of the central artistic concerns of the period. Incomplete Open Cubes exemplifies the deployment of a single idea to become, in LeWitt's words, "a machine that makes the art." The work forges a new way of making art in its ambitious use of a serial system that enables a kind of "noncompositional composition." The translation of the same idea into different scales and media is another key aspect of the work. All 122 variations in the series exist in three dimensions, from a set in which each cube is 2 1/2 inches square to the 40 inches square human-scaled versions. There are also entire sets of photographs, drawings, working sketches and notes, and an artist's book.This publication, which accompanies an exhibition of Incomplete Open Cubes, is the first sustained critical examination of this body of work. The book features much previously unpublished material, including working drawings, schematic drawings, and models, in addition to photographs of the installed structures. Copublished with the Wadsworth Atheneum.… (mais)

The book titled "Kai Kein Respect" accompanies the first major survey exhibition of Kai Althoff, one of the most compelling and original voices in Contemporary Art. Organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, the exhibition documents the most important aspects of the artist's work over the past fifteen years. Co-published by Bridge House Publishing and the ICA, Boston, the book offers full-color illustrations of Althoff's drawings, watercolors, collages, paintings, photographs, performances and installations presinting a comprehensive overview of his complex and varied oeuvre.
Nicholas Baume, Chief Curator, ICA Boston, states "Kai Althoff's work deals explicitly with powerful feelings. The works often evoke or invent narratives, where characters inhabit imaginary worlds that provide allegories of real human experience and emotion." Althoff draws on a multitude of sources in his art, from Germanic folk traditions to recent popular culture and from medieval and gothic religious imagery to early modern expressionism.

Kai Althoff, who also founded the band "Workshop", was born in 1966 in Cologne, Germany, where he currently lives and works. He has had solo exhibitions at galleries in Berlin, Cologne, London, New York, Vienna and Hamburg. Althoff has also been featured in numerous international group exhibitions including the 1993 and 2003 Venice Biennales, "Chere Paintre, Leibe Maler, Dear Painter" at the Centre Pompidou in Paris (2002), and "Drawing Now-8 Propositions" at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2002)… (mais)