Hanru Hou Books

Born in the Chinese town of Qindao in 1954, artist Qin Yufen has spent the last 15 years living and working in Berlin, a cross-cultural biography that in many ways is reflected in her site-sensitive installation work. Combining western artistic techiniques with such symbolically eastern materials as bamboo, rice paper, and silk, Qin engages an ongoing dialogue between form and content, regionalism and internationalism, and East and West. At times serious, humorous, sublime, and simple, the aesthetics of her painterly sculptures have been compared with traditional Chinese poetry, especially in her use of metaphor. This catalogue contextualizes three of Qin's recent installations in Germany within her larger body of work.

The last decade has witnessed a noticeable return to utopia and utopian thinking in contemporary art. This volume convenes artists, academics and curators to discuss different ways of thinking and performing utopia. Divided into two sections, "Utopia Revisited" and "Utopian Positions," it considers both artists exploring the theme as subject matter and artists actively aspiring towards utopian ideals.

"My work has moved away from the idea of a painting as an object," Michael Lin (born 1964) observes. "I'm more interested in creating a painting as a space to occupy." Lin makes painted installations that reconfigure institutional spaces with designs appropriated from Taiwanese textiles. This publication is the first comprehensive overview of his work.

Late textile works by the artist who helped pioneer the sculptural use of fabric in art This book provides a comprehensive overview of the fabric works from the last two decades in the career of legendary artist Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010). “I’ve always had a fascination with the needle,” she once said, “the magic power of the needle. The needle is used to repair damage. It’s a claim to forgiveness.”This body of work began when the artist started incorporating clothes from all stages of her life into her art, and later expanded to include a range of other textiles such as bed linen, handkerchiefs, tapestry, and needlepoint. The fabric works mine the themes of identity and sexuality, trauma and memory, guilt and reparation, and serve as metaphors for emotional and psychological states.The catalog―which accompanies the exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, London, and the Gropius Bau, Berlin―features works from numerous series, including the monumental Cell installations, figurative sculptures and abstract drawings.

Das Buch zur großen Retrospektive von Yayoi Kusama 2021 im Gropius Bau, Berlin. Yayoi Kusama. Eine Retrospektive enthält wegweisendes neues Forschungs- und Archivmaterial zum Œuvre der japanischen Künstlerin, einschließlich Foto- und Filmdokumentationen. Der Fokus liegt auf Yayoi Kusamas Ausstellungen der frühen 1960er Jahre in Deutschland und Europa sowie der großen Bandbreite ihres über achtzigjährigen Schaffens. Neue Essays von elf renommierten Autor*innen beleuchten Kusamas Arbeit aus verschiedenen Perspektiven und richten den Blick auf bislang wenig beachtete Aspekte. So wird etwa das Engagement der Künstlerin für politische und soziale Themen in Europa, Amerika und Japan untersucht.