Walther König Books

‘The ghosts of Gertrude Stein and Francis Ponge hover about these short texts, in which objects become subjects, surface depth and language reality.’ – Tom McCarthy‘In Commuters, the material world is being remade: as confounding and saturated as we pretend that it isn’t.’ – Sally O’Reilly‘…a way of seeing that is startlingly original, and profoundly consoling.’ – Claire-Louise BennettAboard a beaten bus, fragile passengers are transported to a gloomy stop, while a cat stares silently, alone in a stationed trailer.‘Commuters’, the third book of writing by British artist Toby Christian (b.1983), bids us to work with a new train of accounts, travelling between objects and spaces from Vienna to Matera, Liverpool to London.Written in Christian’s trademark dazzling detail, passages teem with feral poetics in descriptions that tilt between the headspaces of guided meditation and hyper-forensic rave. ‘Commuters’ is a searching shuttle through alternative text, zooming to a stellar end.With an introduction by Chris Fite-Wassilak.

A chronological record of overheard and collected remarks, from movie quotes to elevator chats This artist’s book by New York–based artist Lutz Bacher (born 1962) is a chronological record of remarks collected by Bacher from a variety of sources, including cable television advertisements, movies, news broadcasts, radio, novels, airplanes, subways, sidewalks and elevators between 2013 and 2018.

"In 1903 W. E. B. Du Bois's text The Souls of Black Folk made history as a work of sociological thought, and would go on to become a cornerstone of African American literature. In it, Du Bois combined music, history and memoir to advance a vital message of resistance in the uniquely dehumanising context of the so-called 'Jim Crow' era. It was in this collection that Du Bois, in 'Of Our Spiritual Strivings', wrote of the 'double consciousness' experienced by the Black subject -- a 'sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity'. Refusing this fate, Du Bois passionately and creatively makes the case for the rights of Black people of the South to be treated with equality and justice. Over a century later, artist Christina Quarles brings new energy to Du Bois's unfinished project, speaking to his melodious text with her own distinctive visual poetics, testing and inverting the 'double consciousness' idea. Quarles, whose work is informed by her own daily experience with ambiguity, engages with the world from a position that is multiply situated."-- Provided by publisher

A tribute to the life of a German Jewish gallery owner, from dispossession to success in Canada In 1934, the art dealer Max Stern (1904-86) took over Galerie Stern, which was founded by his father on Königsallee in Düsseldorf. This publication follows Stern's extraordinary life, from being forced to abandon his business to the Nazis, to becoming one of Canada's most influential gallery owners.

In her stirring essay, Art on the Frontline, scholar and activist icon Angela Y. Davis asked, in 1985, ?How do we collectively acknowledge our popular cultural legacy and communicate it to the masses of people, most of whom have been denied access to the social spaces reserved for arts and culture?? Looking to the cultural forms born of Afro-American struggles, Davis insists that we attempt to understand, reclaim and glean insight from0these in preparing a political offensive against the racial oppression endemic to capitalism. Working from a site of racial uprising some 35 years later, artist Tschabalala Self responds to Davis?s words with a new series of characteristically vibrant, challenging and provocative works on paper. Her series of three individual subjects emerge collectively as something greater than their parts, suggesting in the ebbs and flows in joy and disdain a kind of0shared social consciousness

This is an anthology of the artist?s collected comics from 2011 to 2020, only allegedly a casual branch of her practice. It includes November (2011) and At the cool table (2013) as well as lesser known, shorter comics of the last few years. Von Wulffens comics address the social codes of the art world, the daily life of being a female artist, and nightmare-like, surreal psychogeographies. They poignantly and parodically observe fears of failure, loneliness, competition, so-called good taste, and sexual affairs, while questioning a clear cut distinction between high and low, artistic genius and amateurism.00Exhibition: KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany (28.11.2020 - 14.02.2021).

Ripeness is black with Victor Man. His greys and modulated blacks are non-minimalist, anti-hard edge. They are alien to the uniform, pigmentary, black paintings of Motherwell, Kline, Newman, or Still, which originate in a conceptually sensorial take on color. Man?s work also differs from the overlytextured, narcissistic, and self-consciously hand-crafted blacks of Hartung or Soulages. The blue-green-black tones in Victor Man are ?gments rather than pigments. They are reminiscent of the medieval grisaille, that consummate technique for encapsulating a dazzling0Texts: Rachel Corbett, Enzo Cucchi, Erwin Kessler, Karl Holmqvist00Exhibition: Galerie Neu, Berlin, Germany (11.09. - 31.10.2020).

New poems from Jimmie Durham juxtaposing observations of nature with scientific studies American artist Jimmie Durham's (born 1940) third book of poetry, Particle/Word Theory collects 38 poems written between 2014 and 2019, and 13 drawings. These poems, for Durham, express his belief that "art and science are the same thing."

Myths and Manifestos? is a compendium of dramatic and polemical texts written and released, by the artist entity Studio for Propositional Cinema between 2009 and 2021. Scripts for a play, a libretto, and an epic poem are punctuated by manifestos and public speeches that act as bridges between them. Together they reflect and warn of an encroaching ideological dark age in which our culture?s communicational forms are becoming increasingly endangered and alienated from our collective control, while making some modest proposals for how we can make space to relearn and retain them, if0there is still enough time to do so

An ethereal late work by the Smithsons, hidden in a German forest In 1984, German furniture-maker Axel Bruchhäuser reached out to architectural duo Alison (1928–93) and Peter Smithson (1923–2003) with a playful letter ostensibly written by his cat and addressed to theirs. The letter between cats inquired about commissioning the Smithsons to build several lookouts on Bruchhäuser’s home, known locally as the “Hexenhaus” (the “Witches’ House”―a common name in the area where the Brothers Grimm wrote their fairy tales). Started in 1986 and completed in 2001, and located in a dense forest in Hessen, the renovation that the Smithsons undertook constituted an example of what they called “law of the conglomerate.” Step by step, the house was expanded and opened to admit the light as well the trees, which became part of the interior. The house’s primary materials are wood and glass, providing a poetic example of latticework and a stunning use of natural light.