Peter Zimmermann (born 1956) borrows the techniques of old masters such as Cranach and Dürer to create superimposed layers of paint that yield a subtly translucent effect. Instead of working in oils, Zimmermann applies an epoxy resin into which acrylic pigments are randomly inserted. Lacing Action painting and Color Field painting with a postmodern twist, Zimmermann’s abstract motifs seem to spring from more figurative representations: he uses computer graphics and ‘dithering’ (a technique that displays images without firm edges so as to give a more colorful appearance) to deform images, texts and signs from his own massive archive of images, evoking the atlases of Gerhard Richter and Aby Warburg. With different algorithms, he renders his source images unrecognizable, abstract. This publication celebrates Zimmermann’s tactile paintings, which possess a luminosity and unique internal sensuality, directly issuing from his complex and innovative technique.

Peter Zimmermann

Arts & Photography

History & Criticism

Damiani/Perrotin

A leading figure in the revival of modern ceramics, Johan Creten (born 1963) uses glazed stoneware, particularly in large-scale sculptural works. The publication unveils a large part of the artist’s career and technical explorations from precious porcelain flower pieces to mysterious monumental stoneware figures.

Johan Creten

Hoet, Jan

Individual Artists

Over the course of her two-decade career, the Italian-born, Alaska-based multimedia artist Paola Pivi (born 1971) has fashioned such unlikely objects as a mausoleum made of cookies and a rotating airplane. Many of her sculptures and photographs are comical, as in her pictures of miniaturized designer chairs attached to bare buttocks, or a leopard walking across rows of cappuccino cups. Animals are a recurrent presence throughout, whether taxidermied and rendered sculptural or alive and photographed in unlikely locales (e.g. her tender portrait of two zebras, their heads hooked around each other’s necks, against a backdrop of mountain snow). This volume is published for Pivi’s 2013 exhibition at the Galerie Perrotin in Paris, and gathers a selection of her work from the past ten years.

Paola Pivi

Gioni, Massimiliano

Hoffmann, Jens

French artist Claude Rutault (born 1941) blurs the boundaries of painting and sculpture, and/or painting and architecture. The work reproduced here consists of monochrome painted canvases that are hung on a wall of the exact same color.

Claude Rutault

The highly crafted trompe l’oeil paintings of Japanese-born, Los Angeles–based artist Kaz Oshiro (born 1967) depict ordinary items like beaten-up amplifiers, filing cabinets, trash dumpsters and suitcases so realistically that they appear as ready-made objects. This volume celebrates his virtuoso practice.

Kaz Oshiro

Duncan, MIchael

Schad, Ed