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Arts & Photography

Individual Artists

CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts

Curated by Ralph Rugoff--former Director of the Wattis Institute and current Director of the Hayward Gallery in London--and featuring work by Johanna Billing, Jennifer Bornstein, Andrea Bowers, Phil Collins, Jeremy Deller, Harrell Fletcher, Josh Greene, Cameron Jamie, Alan Kane, Long March Project, Yoshua Okon, Michele O'Marah, Hirsch Perlman, Jim Shaw, Simon Starling, Javier Téllez, Jeffrey Vallance and Eric Wesley, Amateurs surveys recent artworks in which amateurism is embraced as a critical aesthetic strategy and mode of production. Favored by conceptual artists and early Modernist vanguards, an aesthetic of amateurism has long served as a means for deflating models of academic and market-driven art. This volume challenges the mainstream of contemporary art by bringing together artists who elaborate on this tradition.

Amateurs

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Designed as an homage to the classic 1930 Random House edition of Moby-Dick, with its illustrations by Rockwell Kent, this investigation of present-day America through the lens of Herman Melville's great novel convenes artists and film-makers who have made works relating to its themes of seafaring and the pitting of humankind against the elements. The participants in this homage are Kenneth Anger, Matthew Benedict, Mark Bradford, Marcel Broodthaers, Angela Bulloch, Tom Burr, Tacita Dean, Marcel Dzama, Ellen Gallagher with Edgar Cleijne, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Rodney Graham, John Gutmann, Susan Hiller, Evan Holloway, Peter Hutton, Colter Jacobsen, Brian Jungen, Buster Keaton, Rockwell Kent, Mateo López, Jorge Macchi, Kris Martin, Henrik Olesen, Paulina Olowska, Damián Ortega, Jean Painlevé, Kirsten Pieroth, Richard Serra, Andreas Slominksi, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Adrián Villar Rojas and Orson Welles. The book also boasts a foil-stamped clothbound cover, a fold-out map, essays by Jens Hoffmann and Alexander Nemerov, and full-color illustrations.

Moby Dick

Hoffmann, Jens

Nemerov, Alexander

L. Frank Baum's classic children's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz--which captured an America rapidly changing in response to industrial, political and technological advances--is the impetus for this exquisitely designed catalogue for an exhibition by curator and CCA Wattis Director Jens Hoffmann. An eclectic group of international artists including Robert Bechtle, Jennifer Bornstein, Ulla von Brandenburg, Bruce Conner, Walker Evans, Simryn Gill, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Loris Gréaud, Joseph Grigely, Carsten Höller, Evan Holloway, Glenn Ligon, Steve McQueen, Gareth Moore, Rivane Neuenschwander, Raymond Pettibon, Clare Rojas, Harry Smith, Donald Urquhart, Andy Warhol and Cerith Wyn Evans either created new work or are represented by existing pieces that resonate with the way we experience the world and the idea of America itself. The generously illustrated volume includes a text on each artist, as well as critical essays by Hoffmann and Baum biographer Rebecca Loncraine.

The Wizard of Oz

Loncraine, Rebecca

Marking the 125th anniversary of the publication of Twain’s classic novel, Huckleberry Finn is the final volume in CCA Wattis’ trilogy of exhibitions that take canonical American novels as departure points for examinations by artists of key themes in American culture. Huckleberry Finn is easily among the most important and best-loved works of American literature, but it still tops the banned book list in America, revealing that its tackling of intolerance, racism and struggles for equality remain all too relevant to our society. Here, Twain’s exploration of racial tension is extended in works by Edgar Arceneaux, Ruth-Marion Baruch, Romare Bearden, Claude Clark, Jamal Cyrus, Emory Douglas, Ellen Gallagher, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Rodney Graham, David Hammons, Dorothea Lange, Henry Lewis, Glenn Ligon, Thomas Nast, Kirsten Pieroth, Horace Pippin, Betye Saar, Yinka Shonibare, Alec Soth, William Desmond Taylor, Hank Willis Thomas, Kara Walker, Andy Warhol and others.

Huckleberry Finn

History & Criticism

The CCA Wattis Institute in San Francisco dedicates year long seasons of discussions and public events to a single artist. In 2014–15, Joan Jonas (born 1936) was “on our mind.” This book brings together essays from writers, curators, art historians and artists that focus on a single work, from Jonas’ earliest films through her installation for the US Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale. The book also contains excerpts from readings and public lectures, and images by some of the other artists whose work was evoked in public and private conversation. Contributors include Jacqueline Francis, Renée Green, Quinn Latimer, Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer, Patricia Maloney, Elizabeth Mangini, Judith Rodenbeck and Lynne Tillman.

Joan Jonas Is on Our Mind

The CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, an exhibition space and research institute in San Francisco, dedicates year-long seasons of discussions and public events to a single artist. In 2016–17, the American artist David Hammons (born 1943) was "on our mind." The book begins with the previously unpublished transcript of a rare artist talk given by Hammons in 1994 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, on the occasion of his exhibition there. It then introduces a series of photographs the artist sent to the Wattis Institute in 2017, interspersed with texts by the Bay Area poet Tongo Eisen-Martin and the writer and critic Fred Moten. Much like Hammons’ work, this publication raises more questions than it answers. Rather than functioning as a comprehensive introduction to the artist, David Hammons Is on Our Mind offers visual and textual elements that relate obliquely to the enigmatic artist’s oeuvre.

David Hammons Is on Our Mind (CC WATTIS ICA)

Moten, Fred

Eisen-Martin, Tongo

HAMMONS, DAVID

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Books by CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts