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Angie Keefer: Second Thoughts (2019)

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Copy-edited by Eugenia Bell. Designed and typeset by Scott Ponik. Printed and bound by Sheridan MI. Published in an edition of 1000 by Kunstverein Publishing, Amsterdam and Plug In Editions, Winnipeg.

At nearly 550-pages, Second Thoughts is long in scope but precisely constructed. Angie Keefer leads readers down vividly articulated paths, documenting her thought processes in an exacting manner that reveals writing itself as a process of formulating the world. Accumulated knowledge is reconfigured through the pacing and cadence of each sentence.

Keefer worked closely with designer Scott Ponik to present this selection of writing as a unified whole while framing each individual text with its own synopsis and postscript. Though all of the pieces have been published previously, many were significantly updated, amended, and rewritten for this edition. Second Thoughts includes an introduction by Maxine Kopsa and a short text co-written with Lucy Skaer. The title is pulled in part from Keefer’s 2017 solo exhibition FIRST CLASS, SECOND THOUGHTS, INTERMINABLE SWELLat Plug In ICA.

Angie Keefer is an artist, writer, teacher, and publisher, though the distinctions among these categories are much less definitive in Keefer’s work than comma-separated terms would indicate. Taking an interest in the incidental aspects of art-making and its dissemination — from critical & commercial positioning through language, to surrounding labour, and shifting market forces — Keefer often pulls at the stitching that holds the enterprise together. She has exhibited extensively at institutions in the USA and Europe, including Witte de With, Rotterdam (2018); Plug In ICA (2017); Greater New York, PS1, New York (2015-16); Kunstverein, Munich (2015); Whitney Biennial, New York (2014); Objectif Exhibitions, Antwerp (2013-14); and Yale Union, Portland (2013).

ISBN: 978-94-90629-20-5
Softback
544 pages
5.4 x 8.2 inches

$25.00

tunnel: A tender proposition to the din (2018)

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Project by tunnel
(Jen Reimer and Magnus Tiesenhausen)
Mastering by James Plotkin

A tone is a wave, and a wave is just a circle in the format of a line: a circle in eternity, an undulating line in sequence. If a tone is alive, what is the substance of its body, and do our bodies have that substance also? Can a tone be a limb? What would it reach for?

A tender proposition to the din is a moment extracted from a cycle of water storage, distillation, distribution, consumption, transformation. This cycle takes place on a scale and scope far beyond that of our bodies and the human lifetime; it encompasses states of atmospheric haze, glacial movement, the wayward paths of astral bodies. A tender proposition to the din captures an industrialized, infrastructural instance within the cycle.

There is music in this infrastructure, emergent tones in the din. Human voices crudely, but harmonically, mimic the tones of machines—the work of starlings in the dark. Mimicry is a type of communication, a type of tenderness; our song reaches out to the song of the machines and through them, to the cycle. In distilling the tones heard in the din, in speaking to and singing with the din, tones are isolated and purified in us also. Distill and be distilled.

The industrial civic processes recorded here are the vibrations of water treatment and circulation taken from within Calgary’s Glenmore reservoir and Bonnybrook Wastewater Treatment Plant. These recordings were facilitated by the City of Calgary WATERSHED+ Dynamic Environment Lab and by many gracious and patient Water Services workers.

This edition was produced with the support of the Esker Foundation Commission Fund for the exhibition A tender proposition to the din.

Edition of 200 custom-pressed records in paper jacket.

$15.00

Jasmina Cibic: Spielraum (2018)

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Edited by Jasmina Cibic and Una Popović.
Contributors: Anna Gritz, Róna Kopeczky, Una Popović, Dubravka Sekulić, Jelena Vesić, Alessandro Vincentelli, What, How & for Whom (WHW), and Giovanna Zapperi.

Spielraum is a publication about Jasmina Cibic’s latest work, developed with the Ludwig Museum, Budapest; the International Centre of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade.

Cibic is known for her investigation of how art and architecture are utilised as soft power strategies in the enterprise of nation building. Her works often gather and restage found materials that are in some way infused by the spectre of political ideology but that have, over time, changed in their performative function as enforcers of state identity.

The title of the project is drawn from an essay by Karl Kraus, in which he vehemently opposes the use of decoration in both language and architecture. In this multidisciplinary work, Cibic takes Kraus’s concept of ‘Spielraum’ as a lens through which to examine strategies of nation building by political figures and establishments via the use of linguistic and visual decoration, with particular focus on the first summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in Belgrade, in 1961.

The book is published in partnership with the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art and Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade; with the support of Museum of Yugoslavia; Esker Foundation; Collection Mihael Šutalo; and Waddington Studios, London.

ISBN 978-3-95476-254-5
296 pages, hardcover
250 illustrations
28 x 23 cm

$50.00

Limited Edition Artist Tote: GuyGuyGuy (2019)

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This limited edition tote bag designed by artist and designer GuyGuyGuy (Guy Anderson) was commissioned to commemorate the launch of Esker Foundation’s Bookshop. This royal blue canvas bag features hot pink silkscreen printing on both sides: the front shows the artist’s design and the back shows the name Bookshop at Esker Foundation, along with the Bookshop’s logo.

Dimensions (W x H): 37 x 40 cm
Handles: 26 cm long
100% cotton
Edition of 100

$10.00

Kapwani Kiwanga: Structural Adjustments (2018)

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Edited by Yesomi Umolu and Gaëtane Verna
Foreward by Bill Michel and Gaëtane Verna; writing by Samia Henni and Yesomi Umolu; interview with Kapwani Kiwanga and Carolin Köchling

Kapwani Kiwanga is a Canadian-born, Paris-based artist who creates installations, performances, and video art that bring together her training in anthropology and comparative religion, while also drawing on her interest in history, memory, and mythology. Kiwanga deliberately mixes truth and fiction in her work, confusing the two in order to create fantastical narratives that are nonetheless rooted in rigorous research. This book presents works by Kiwanga investigating disciplinary architectures that were presented at the Logan Center Gallery at the University of Chicago and the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto. Opening with a compelling array of installation images, research documents, and film stills from a newly commissioned video, the book also includes a curatorial essay surveying Kiwanga’s work to date, an essay that offers an unfinished cartography of the genealogy of disciplinary spaces, and an interview with Kiwanga that covers her research interests and methodology.

ISBN 978-0-692-96318-0
80 pages, soft cover
70 color plates, 30 halftones
15 x 20 cm

$32.00

Earthlings (2017)

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Roger Aksadjuak, Shuvinai Ashoona, Pierre Aupilardjuk, Shary Boyle, Jessie Kenalogak, John Kurok and Leo Napayok
With texts by Shary Boyle, Heather Igloliorte, Naomi Potter and Shauna Thompson

Published by Esker Foundation in collaboration with Doris McCarthy Gallery,
Galerie de l’UQAM and Nanaimo Art Gallery.

Published on the occasion of the exhibition Earthlings, curated by Shary Boyle in collaboration with Shauna Thompson,
and presented at Esker Foundation, Calgary, January 21 – May 7, 2017.

Earthlings touring dates:

Doris McCarthy Gallery, Toronto: November 1, 2017 – January 27, 2018.
Galerie de l’UQAM, Montreal: March 11 – April 14, 2018.
Nanaimo Art Gallery: August 2 – October 6, 2018.

ISBN: 978-0-9811951-9-3
Publication in Inuktitut, French and English
Texts by Shary Boyle, Heather Igloliorte, Naomi Potter, and Shauna Thompson
Design by Mark Timmings
144 pages, soft cover
Over eighty colour illustrations
28 x 28 centimeters

$45.00

Jack Bush: In Studio (2016)

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Edited by Naomi Potter
Foreward by Naomi Potter, essay and catalogue entries by Sarah Stanners, Ph.D.

Published on the occasion of Esker Foundation’s exhibition, Jack Bush: In Studio, this colour-illustrated catalogue presents a tightly curated preview of Sarah Stanners’ forthcoming publication, Jack Bush: A Catalogue Raisonné. Featuring the history and trajectory of 20 Jack Bush masterworks, Jack Bush: In Studio offers new and unique insight into the life, work, and career of this celebrated Canadian colour field painter.

ISBN 978-0-9811951-6-2
96 pages, hard cover
Colour images
29.5 x 25 cm

$40.00

Wonder and Resonance: Fiction/Non-fiction (2015)

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Edited by Naomi Potter and Shauna Thompson
Featuring work by Raymond Boisjoly, Wally Dion, Brenda Draney, Dean Drever, Jeff Funnell, Jeffrey Gibson, Alex Janvier, Jonathan Jones, Glenn Ligon, Duane Linklater, Kent Monkman, Jude Norris, Krista Belle Stewart

Published on reflection of the exhibition Fiction/Non-fiction (2013), this full-colour catalogue features texts by Brenda Draney and Andrea Williamson, along with transcriptions of a public conversation between Raymond Boisjoly and Duane Linklater; a panel discussion featuring Brenda Draney, Jeff Funnell, Jude Norris, and Krista Belle Stewart; and an interview with Wayne Baerwaldt, Quyen Hoang, and Glenn Ligon.

ISBN 978-0-9811951-5-5
98 pages, soft cover
Colour images
34 x 21.5 cm

$40.00