Embedded Metaphor

Embedded Metaphor features the work of twenty-six contemporary artists employing the motif of a bed as a domestic space that intersects with culture at large. Through sculpture, installation and photography, these artists explore topics of gender, intimacy, love, health, psychosis, personal narratives, memory and dreams with, at times explicit, cultural, social and political implications. Along with an image for each artist, there are artist statements and excerpts from writers, theorists, and artists such as Carl Jung, Samuel Beckett, and Mark Twain. The catalog also includes the artists’ biographical information, and an essay by curator Nina Felshin with images of influential artists who also have worked with the same motif.

SCULPTURE/PHOTOGRAPHY/INSTALLATION ART
1997, 10 x 10 inches, 78 pp, 12 color and 21 b&w images
Softcover, ISBN 0916365484, ISBN-13: 978-0916365486
code: ici meta D-3
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UnNaturally

Employing artificial materials to create simulations of nature, the 18 artists featured in UnNaturally explore the ways in which the boundaries between nature and culture are sometimes blurred. Works by Tim Hawkinson, Iiigo Manglano-Ovalle, Roxy Paine, Marc Quinn, and Francis Whitehead play on our nostalgia for an idealized pre-industrial past in which man and nature coexisted harmoniously in an unspoiled landscape, the same nostalgia that has given rise to constructed environments in malls, zoos, and other themed "entertainment destinations" where nature is tamed and packaged for consumer use. This catalog includes an essay by the curator Mary-Kay Lombino, a short story by Philip K. Dick, and imagess from the exhibition.

CONTEMPORARY ART
2003, 10.5 x 9.5 inches, 72 pp, 44 color and 2 b&w images
Softcover, ISBN 0916365662, ISBN-13: 978-0916365660
code: ici unn D-4

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Pictures, Patents, Monkeys, and More… On Collecting

* Mature Content

Including such artists as Janine Antoni, Willie Coles, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Christian Marclay, Alan Rath, Jason Rhoades, Kay Rosen, Jessica Stockholder, and Lisa Yuskavage, among many others, this catalogue examines the collecting impulse in its various manifestations, raising fundamental questions about why we collect and whether it matters what we collect. Surprising and eccentric, this publication features three utterly different collections: Pictures (and other contemporary art objects) from the renowned Robert Shiffler Foundation in Ohio; the stunningly beautiful Patents, a selection of the Smithsonian's collection of patent models submitted to the US Patent Office in the 19th century; and Monkeys, from a private, New York-based collection of approximately 1,600 sock monkey toys. The catalogue includes four short essays, and sixty-eight color images, two of which are of mature content.

CONTEMPORARY ART
2001, 10 x 8.5 inches, 96 pp, 68 color images
Hardcover, ISBN 091636559X, ISBN-13: 978-0916365592
code: ici pic D-4

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Beyond Preconceptions: The Sixties Experiment

This book features works by twenty-one major international artists from four geographic centers where radical experimentation in the visual arts forced open art's forms and functions in the 1960s. Their practices, often a response to the constraints of modernism, were shaped by regional conditions and a new desire for an international avant-garde. Although the exhibition catalogue maintains a strong relationship with the vibrant conceptual art movements of the period, it also includes works that are striking for their experiments within more traditional forms of art-making such as sculpture, photography, and drawing. The catalog includes five essays, artists’ biographies, and seventy-six artists’ plates and images.

CONCEPTUAL ART/SCULPTURE/PHOTOGRAPHY
2000, 7.5 X 10 inches, 135 pp, 76 color and b&w images
Hardcover, ISBN 0916365581, ISBN-13: 9780916365585
code: ici 60s D-4

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David Smith Medals For Dishonor

David Smith is considered to be one of America’s most distinguished sculptors, best known for having established the tradition of open-form welded metal sculpture in the 1930s. In the catalogue, Michael Brenson and Dore Ashton examine a major, although little-known body of his work, the Medals for Dishonor, which Smith began in 1937—just before the Second World War. Smith was enraged by the rise of fascism, and between 1937 and 1940 he made a powerful group of fifteen cast bronze bas-relief medallions that convey his sense of foreboding. The Medals relate to a long tradition of cast bronze bas-relief commemorative medallions used to honor those who participated nobly in war. Smith approached this tradition ironically, denouncing those who willingly contributed to the horrors of war and creating, as his titles suggest, medals for their dishonor. His message is conveyed through strong imagery and titles such as “Death by Bacteria”. The catalogue includes two essays, an artist statement, thirty-seven plates, and two images of David Smith.

SCULPTURE
1996, 9 x 9 inches, 84 pp, 40 achromatic artists’ plates & 1 color image
Softcover, ISBN 0916365476
code: ici smi D-4

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Shoot the Family

This exhibition catalogue explores the theme of family, both externally and internally. The word “shoot” in the title has a dual meaning, referring both to the violence of the camera and to the violence of the gun. Shoot the Family features artists Yasser Aggour, Darren Almond, Janine Antoni, Mitch Epstein, Hai Bo, Jonathan Monk, Adrian Piper, and Gillian Wearing, among others, whose media range from portraits, to snapshots, to video interviews, to slides. Please note: this book contains mature imagery.

CONTEMPORARY ART
2006, 7.5 x 10 inches, 72 pp, color illus.
Hardcover, ISBN: 0-916365-73-5
code: ici fam D-3

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Making It Real

The question of what constitutes “the real” is an ongoing problem in the arts; philosophy, psychology, and a plethora of other discourses have all delved into this phenomenon. iCI's Making it Real exhibition explores notions of artificiality while taking into consideration the power and perplexity of popular images. Contributing artists include Tina Barney, Jan Henle, Collier Schorr, Paul McCarthy, Mike Kelly, and others. Essays by Luc Sante and Vik Muniz preface documentation of the artists’ work.

CONTEMPORARY ART
1997, 10 x 10 inches, 84 pp, color illus.
Hardcover, ISBN: 0-916365-49-2
code: ici real D-4

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Irish Art Now: From the Poetic to the Political

Set within the sociopolitical frame of Ireland, this exhibition catalogue—featuring artists Willie Doherty, Mark Francis, and Kathy Prendergast, among others—explores themes of identity within Ireland today. Fintan O’Toole and Ken Levin provide in-depth introductory essays on the artists’ work.

CONTEMPORARY ART
1999, 9 x 11 inches, 96 pp, color illus.
Softcover, ISBN: 1-85894-089-3
code: ici irs D-3

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Phantasmagoria: Specters of Absence

First hosted by Museo de Arte del Banco de la República in Bogotá, Columbia, the Phantasmagoria exhibition and this accompanying catalogue explore the themes and mysticisms that link art and the history of illusion. The catalogue features art works that utilize a variety of non-traditional media, including smoke, theatrical lighting, and cinema, presented alongside drawings and sculptures. Participating artists include Christian Boltanski, Jim Campbell, Michel Delacroix, William Kentridge, and Rosângela Rennó, among others. In addition to full photographic documentation of the show, the book includes an essay by José Roca and a short fiction piece by renowned author Bruce Sterling.

CONTEMPORARY ART
2007, 9 x 10 inches, 72 pp, color illus.
Hardcover, ISBN: 0-916365-76-X
code: ici phan D-3

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Space is the Place

The theme of space exploration—its infinite potential, as well as its historical successes and failures—is the focus of Space Is the Place, a catalogue published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name. This volume features installations, paintings, works on paper, and sound and video works made during the past ten years by an international group of contemporary artists (including Laurie Anderson, Oleg Kulik, Damián Ortega, and Marko Peljhan). Space is a powerful catalyst for these artists, inspiring nostalgia and fantasy, as well as consideration of serious earthly concerns, and what it means to “disengage”. The catalogue includes essays by exhibition curators Alex Baker and Toby Kamps.

CONTEMPORARY ART
2006, 9 x 12 inches, 80 pp, color illus.
Softcover, ISBN: 0-916365-74-3
code: ici space D-3

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A Different War: Vietnam in Art

A collection of art from the Vietnam War created by citizens at home and soldiers during and after the conflict, this book serves as both a catalogue for the traveling exhibition and a survey of the art of the war. The breadth of media is nearly as impressive as the art's impact—performance art, sculpture, lithography, photography, mixed media, painting, and silk-screens. The emotions evoked are universally visceral and assaulting; an appropriate discord for a subject of this magnitude.

CONTEMPORARY ART
1990, 9 x 11 inches, 131 pp, color illus.
Softcover, ISBN: 0-941104-43-5
code: ici war D-3

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Situation Comedy: Humor in Recent Art

During the past ten years, humor has turned up with increasing frequency in contemporary art, serving as both a means of entertainment and an extremely effective critical device. This catalogue, which was produced in conjunction with the iCI exhibition of the same name, presents more than sixty works—video and sound installations, paintings, sculptures, drawings, and photographs—by both young and established artists working primarily in North America and Europe. The artists—including Rodney Graham, Christian Jankowski, Martin Kersels, William Pope.L, Richard Prince, David Shrigley, and John Waters—utilize the leveling power of humor to break down barriers of taste and to question authority at every turn. Their work employs a range of devises, from pranks, cruelty, and embarrassment, to parody and satire, slapstick, and practical jokes. Color images of the artists’ work are presented alongside an essay by humorist David Sedaris.

CONTEMPORARY ART
2005, 8 x 10 inches, 68 pp, color illus.
Softcover, ISBN 0-916365-72-7
code: ici hum D-2

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100 Artists See God

With a mixture of irreverence and sincerity, artists John Baldessari and Meg Cranston invited one hundred artists to respond to one of art’s most enduring challenges: to picture the divine. Regardless of one’s point of view—theist, atheist, or even antitheist—we all live in a world that is profoundly influenced by concepts of God and by the notion of "divine authority." This exhibition catalogue features work by an international group of artists—many of the works made in response to the curators’ call for participation—including younger artists active in Los Angeles (where Baldessari and Cranston are based), other parts of the United States, and in Europe and Asia. Sixteen thematic categories provide an overall framework for the show, spanning a variety of approaches to a highly personal and often controversial issue. The works (some of which are appropriate for mature readers only) reflect idiosyncratic and unexpected viewpoints, as well as traditional religious iconography. An introduction by the curators, an essay by art critic Thomas McEvilley, and statements by the artists accompany color images.

CONTEMPORARY ART
2004, 8.5 x 11 inches, 136 pp, color illus.
Softcover, ISBN 0-916365-68-9
code: ici 100 D-2

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My Realty: Contemporary Art and the Culture of Japanese Animation

This exhibition catalogue investigates the impact Japanese animation (anime) has had on today’s art in Japan, in other Asian countries and in the West. Presenting works by artists from these different regions, the catalogue explores how Western and Eastern artists have influenced one another through their shared interest in this art form. While anime has its origins in Japanese woodblock printing as well as American animation, it posits technology as a positive force in contemporary society—indeed, much anime has a futuristic quality. The featured works focus on slick, sci-fi concepts such as cyborgs and other humanoid robotics, aliens and fantastic creatures, and a post-nuclear apocalyptic landscape. They range from Paul McCarthy’s cartoon characters to Micha Klein’s glossy images inspired by club culture; from Takashi Murakami’s sculpture, which uses anime directly, to Momoyo Torimitsu’s enormous balloon rabbits, which satirize anime’s exaggeratedly cute images. Essays by the curators and by artist Takashi Murakami accompany color images.

CONTEMPORARY ART/ANIME
2001, 9 x 12 inches, 80 pp, color illus.
Softcover, ISBN 1-879003-33-3
code: ici ani D-2

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Slightly Unbalanced

Artists are increasingly probing psychological quirks and neuroses as a primary subject of their art. Slightly Unbalanced presents work dealing with a range of psychological tendencies, including anxiety, obsessive behavior, depression and narcissism. The featured artists—including the internationally renown Louise Bourgeois, Sophie Calle, Mike Kelley, Bruce Nauman, William Pope.L, Cindy Sherman, and David Shrigley— question what constitutes normalcy, and what qualifies as neurosis, a slippery and suggestive endeavor. Divided into four thematic sections, the catalogue presents photography and video (particularly works in diaristic and confessional formats), and sculptural installations that explore the house as a fertile metaphor for the mind—the domestic interior as a stand-in for the psyche. The artists’ work provokes a range of responses, including discomfort, recognition, empathy, and humor, its psychologically-loaded subject matter offering a rich vocabulary for contemporary art. Essays by curator Susan Hapgood and psychologist Susan M. Andersen and brief statements by the artists support the color images.

CONTEMPORARY ART
2008, 6 x 9 inches, 72 pp, color illus.
Softcover, ISBN 978-0-916365-78-3
code: ici psy D-2