"Amid the rolling hills of paper is a salmagundi of feathers, unidentifiable filth and fluids (mostly piss and liquor, though one hopes for at least a smidgeon of blood and cum). Sticks and bottles breach the drywall, while graffiti, scumbled with streaks of mysterious liquid, consumes every inch of the walls. One bit, like a laconic Richard Prince, reads I MAY NOT GO DOWN IN HISTORY, BUT I'LL GO DOWN ON YER LIL SISTER..." wrote David Velasco in his artforum.com diary entry devoted to Dash Snow and Dan Colen's blowout New York Deitch Projects installation, Nest. Along with a bevy of collaborators, including Terence Koh, Hanna Liden, Nate Lowman and Adam McEwan, Snow and Colen filled the space with over 3,000 shredded phone books and-in a bacchanalian performance piece-trashed the gallery during several overnight sessions. Designed by the artists, this book features gritty behind-the-scenes photos

Dash Snow & Dan Colen: Nest

Arts & Photography

Grayson, Kathy

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Deitch Projects

This spectacular exploration of new trends in "fucked-up figuration" is the unconventional exhibition catalogue for Mail Order Monsters, the international traveling show put together by Kathy Grayson of New York's Deitch Projects. Bound in a wrap-around portfolio printed with artwork by Taylor McKimens and Ben Jones, it collects 20 frame-ready prints by McKimens, Jones, Mat Brinkman, Ry Fyan, Tomoo Gokita, Joe Grillo, Evan Gruzis, Eddie Martinez, Dan McCarthy, Takeshi Murata, Aurel Schmidt, Francine Spiegel and Dennis Tyfus, as well as a 26-page bound booklet with essay (and riveting source images) by Grayson, who writes, "Every generation has its unique take on the figure and the freshest figurative art right now seems to portray the figure this way: broken, exploded, uncanny and monstrous!" While the art world at large is experiencing a festival of "fractured figures," this exhibition focuses on the younger generation of monsters bred out of our strange and unique, culturally dysphoric, fucked-up NOW.

Mail Order Monsters

PictureBox

After more than three decades in the New York underground scene, we finally have a book on the inimitable Kembra Pfahler, artist and lead singer of the interdisciplinary rock band, the Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black. Cataloguing her recent projects for the 2008 Whitney Biennial--which included a huge rock show in the Park Avenue Armory--this volume also features her most notorious body-art performances and shocking Sewn Vagina and Wall of Vagina pieces. Numerous full-bleed photographs capture the making of the Biennial artworks, the preparation for her live show, the performance itself and the aftermath. Also included are images of her drawings, sculptural works and installations, alongside short texts by the artist and an essay by curator and sometimes Girl of Karen Black, Kathy Grayson.

Kembra Pfahler: Beautalism

Individual Artists

With colored pencils and graphite, the rising, self-taught artist Aurel Schmidt, born in Kaloomps, Canada, in 1982, renders terrifying, Arcimboldo-esque babes with a highly charged, punk sensibility alongside forests of maggots, busts of tangled snakes, faces and figures made of spiders, cockroaches, cum and discarded hamburger. Man Eater, the first comprehensive volume devoted to Schmidt’s work, includes more than 60 drawings from the last five years, amplified by a generous selection of details that allow the reader to fully experience the painstaking precision of the artist’s hand. Featuring works from her recent solo exhibitions at Deitch Projects in New York and Peres Projects in Los Angeles, as well as drawings shown at the Deste Museum in Athens, Greece, this volume includes images from Schmidt’s Burnouts series of cigarette-burned faces and Party Monster series depicting New York City nightlife gone wild. Essay by curator Kathy Grayson.

Aurel Schmidt: Man Eater

History & Criticism

Rosson Crow

COMMUNIC ART

Michael Cline (born 1973) is a contemporary fabulist, describing an almost hellish version of the American Dream in which the streets are not paved with gold but littered with vagrants, violence and the remnants of whatever social contract may once have existed, all executed in soothing pastel tones and children's illustration-style drawing. This is the first monograph on the New York-based artist.

Michael Cline

Higgs, Matthew

JRP|Ringier

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