FTN-blog

For Pierre Huyghe, the act of exhibiting represents a profound interaction with a sentient environment that gives rise to novel prospects of interdependence between unfolding events and constituent elements. The exhibition itself is a being whose manifestation is inseparable from the time and space in which it appears.

His pieces are conceptualized as works of speculative fiction, often serving as a bridge between diverse forms of intelligent life, encompassing both biological and technological entities, as well as tangible but inert matter, all of which possess the capacity to learn, adapt, and evolve. They are permeable, contingent, and at times, indifferent to those who view them.

Pierre Huyghe, who was born in 1962 in Paris and currently resides and works in Santiago, Chile, is a renowned artist known for his international presence and participation in various exhibitions around the globe.

Some of his recent exhibitions include “Liminal” at Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul, South Korea (2025); “Liminal” at Palazzo Grassi-Punta della Dogana, Pinault Collection in Venice, Italy (2024); “Chimeras” at EMMA Espoo Museum of Modern Art in Finland (2023); “Pierre Huyghe” at Pinault Collection, Bourse de Commerce in Paris (2023); “Variants” at Kistefos Museum in Jevnaker (2022); “After UUmwelt” at Luma Foundation in Arles (2021); “UUmwelt” at Serpentine Gallery in London (2018); and “The Roof Garden” at Metropolitan Museum in New York (2015). Additionally, from 2012 to 2014, a major retrospective of Huyghe’s work traveled from the Centre Pompidou in France to the Ludwig Museum in Germany and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in the United States.

Huyghe has been the recipient of numerous prestigious awards, including the Nasher Sculpture Prize (2017); the Kurt Schwitters Prize (2015); the Roswitha Haftmann Preis Award (2013); the Contemporary Artist Award from the Smithsonian American Museum (2010); the Hugo Bozz Prize at the Guggenheim Museum in New York (2002); and an artist residency at the DAAD in Berlin (1999-2000), among others.

www.ftn-books.com has several Huyghe publicatrions at this moment available.

Gillian Wearing, a contemporary artist hailing from Britain, delves into power dynamics and voyeurism in everyday life through her conceptual photographs and videos. Rather than focusing on aesthetics, Wearing captures the self-awareness of her subjects using prosthetic masks, voice dubbing, and altered photographs in portraits of individuals and groups. Her thought-provoking works are in conversation with fellow artist Cindy Sherman, as well as early 20th century Surrealist works by Claude Cahun. Notable series in Wearing’s portfolio include “Signs that Say What You Want Them To Say” and “Not Signs that Say What Someone Else Wants You To Say” (1992-1993). In this project, Wearing approached strangers and asked them to write down their thoughts, then photographed them holding the sign. Speaking about the series, she states, “As an artist, it’s always crucial to find a distinct language, which is why the Signs intrigued me. They felt fresh. Little did I know they would have such a large impact, from advertising to people designing signs for their Facebook pages.” Born in 1963 in Birmingham, United Kingdom, she relocated to London in 1983 to study at Chelsea School of Art and later Goldsmiths College, where she became part of the Young British Artists movement alongside Damien Hirst. In 1997, Wearing received the prestigious Turner Prize for her work “60 Minutes Silence” (1996). She currently resides and works in London, UK. The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. are among the institutions that house Wearing’s works.

www.ftn-books.com has several Gillian Wearing publications available.

Marcel van Eeden (Den Haag, 1965) creates graphic narratives. He draws from existing imagery found in magazines, newspapers, and books. However, all the visual material he uses as a starting point predates his own existence.
This choice reflects Van Eeden’s fascination with non-being: the period preceding his own existence. By employing existing images and literally taking them into his own hands, he seeks to grasp what he himself has not experienced.

Since 2005, Van Eeden has been working in series. Cat. 2.8: Desserts (2015), a series of lithographs of desserts, serves as an example of this. Undeniably not photographs, yet the glaze glistens and the fat quivers. Van Eeden’s handwriting is realistic, but his ‘translations’ of images allow them to become part of a different story. They have begun a new and unique chapter. Typography is also an important element in Van Eeden’s work. It serves as a preview of a particular aspect of the graphic narrative, but also exists as a striking image on its own. With the images he finds and uses as a starting point for his drawings, Van Eeden claims to build a story. He combines images from various sources and times with a fictitious storyline.

With the images he finds and uses as a starting point for his drawings, Van Eeden claims to build a story. He combines images from various sources and times with a fictitious storyline. As a result, certain characters frequently reappear in his oeuvre: archaeologist Oswald Sollmann, botanist K.M. Wiegand, and psychiatrist Matheus Boryna.

The desire to become a writer has always been ingrained within me. […] It is possible, it seems, to construct a story using photos found in magazines. In this scenario, history becomes a vast container full of Lego blocks. Each individual block representing a historic fact or photo that may have no apparent connection, but when pieced together, form a narrative that is not entirely true.

Van Eeden received his education at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague (1989-1993). Exhibitions featuring his work have taken place at prestigious venues such as Albertina (Vienna), Drawing Room (London), Martin-Gropius-Bau (Berlin), and GEM (The Hague).

www.ftn-books.com has several van Eeden pub;ications available.

Hans van Bentem (born in 1965 in the Netherlands) has often created grand monumental works, demonstrating a preference for installation art. This form allows for the integration of multiple materials and objects, resulting in an even more complex interplay. Within this interplay, a seemingly random game is played, utilizing associations and attributes with both loaded and unburdened connotations. In addition, the artist does not shy away from incorporating elements of comic culture and ethnography into a single piece, seamlessly blending aspects of high and low cultures from various time periods and geographical areas. As a result, his work takes on the appearance of a bizarre synthesis.

THE GROTESQUE
Due to strict travel restrictions during the pandemic, Van Bentem has been unable to return to his beloved studio in China, where a series of porcelain works still await completion. Instead, during the lockdowns, he has turned to local opportunities and worked at Trapman’s studio on a new series of ceramic sculptures, first showcased at MPV Gallery in Oisterwijk. In these pieces, Van Bentem plays with the notions of attraction and repulsion, eroticism and ridicule, beauty and banality, brute force and delicate strings, all presented in exquisitely crafted glazed earthenware and blown glass, resting on elegant veneered wooden pedestals.

www.ftn-books.com has several van Bentem pubpications now available.

Conrad Felixmüller, a renowned German Expressionist painter and printmaker, is renowned for his vibrant and graphic landscape and portrait pieces. During the 1930s, his art took on a more poised color scheme and focused on realistic, genre-style representation – a significant contrast from his earlier, socio-critical work. Hailing from Dresden, Germany, he commenced his studies under Carl Bantzer at the prestigious Dresden Academy of Art and later worked at Ludwig Meidner’s studio. In 1917, Felixmüller established the influential monthly periodical MENSCHEN, which championed progressive art and literature. A few years later, he co-founded the German Expressionist group, Dresden Secession, alongside Otto Schubert and Otto Dix, who was once his student. Around the same period, he published his autobiography “Mein Werden” and his musings on artistic design, “Künstlerische Gestaltung.” However, the advent of Nazism saw his paintings on display in notorious exhibitions such as “Reflections of Decay” in 1933 and “Degenerate Art” in 1937, which resulted in the confiscation of his works from public collections. He later taught drawing and painting at Martin-Luther-Universität in Halle from 1949 to 1961 before retiring in Berlin. The artist breathed his last on March 24, 1977, in Berlin, Germany. Felixmüller’s masterpieces can be found in renowned collections such as the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, the Von der Heydt-Museum in Wuppertal, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

www.ftn-books.com has several Felixmuller titles available.

Upon graduating from the Kunstgewerbeschule in Basel, Switzerland, in 1928, Nelly Rudin (1928-2013) embarked upon a prosperous career as a graphic designer. In 1964, however, she forwent her profession to dedicate herself wholly to the realm of visual art. In accordance with the dictum of restraint, a principle ingrained during her time as a graphic designer, she principally explored fundamental shapes such as squares, triangles, and circles, along with their varying partitions. In 1974, this culminated in the manifestation of her “assembled canvases,” consisting of vertical intersections and diagonal constructions with a vacant, white area at its center. Two years later, Rudin upheaved this emphasis and divulged from the two-dimensional plane, ushering in her era of “aluminum frame objects.” As per the artist’s perspective, these square framing formations, projected outward from the wall like reliefs, effectively frame the vacant wall as if it were a painting: “Where an image typically occurs, there lies emptiness, and where the frame stands, there resides the picture.” In 1977, Nelly Rudin began exploring this theme in painting, bestowing preeminence upon the painting’s outermost margins: either the sides of the picture (exemplified in “Nr. 320” and “Nr. 373”), or its edges (“Nr. 489”). This she combined with exaggerated stretcher frames, designed to impart a sense of voluminosity upon her works, at times utilizing varying degrees of thickness within a single piece, challenging our accustomed perspectives. In 1981, this focus transitioned to objects fashioned from acrylic glass (“Nr. 19” and “Nr. 22”), taking advantage of its transparency to create novel perceptual effects. As Rudin perceptively states, “Paint applied to the edges can traverse the glass and unexpectedly materialize on formerly unmarked edges.” Rudin’s oeuvre as a whole is characterized by this concept of “migration” – a gradual expansion – as she consistently revamps her paramount themes, continually blurring the dichotomy between painting and sculpture to reveal fresh nuances.

The artist’s emphasis on peripheral regions produced a notable novel subject to the lexicon of Concrete Art. Following the artist’s passing, her creations and documents have been maintained by the Nelly Rudin Foundation, established in her previous abode and workspace located in the town of Uitikon near Zurich.

www.ftn-books.com has the nice Bottrop poster for sale

Roger Nellens, a Belgian painter, was born in Liège in 1937 and passed away in Knokke-Heist in 2021. He was self-taught and made his debut in painting in 1960. Influenced by Permeke at first, he began painting trains and signals under the guidance of P. Delvaux. From 1969, his “Imaginary Machines” were born. The press states, “R.N., along with artists such as Picabia, Duchamp, Ernst, and Tinguely, pursue the delusions of machines. What was meant to assist us has now overshadowed mankind,” and “at R.N.’s hand, the aggression of machines is lost; he illustrates their poetic dimension and thus established a wholly unique iconography.” Nellens’ work can be found at the Museum of Ostend and Le Tropoliain in the Gribaumont metro station of Brussels. He is referenced in the Lexicon of West Flemish Visual Artists I, BAS I, and Two Centuries of Belgian Artist Signatures.

www,ftn-books.com has several Nellens titles now available.

Hans Platschek, born in Berlin in 1923, relocated with his family to South America in 1939. He commenced his studies at the Montevideo Art Academy, where he rose to the position of chairman of the Uruguayan Art Students Association. The artist also co-established an institution dedicated to modern art and served as a publisher for the esteemed cultural publication, “Clima”. His initial solo exhibitions were held in Montevideo in 1948, with his first lectures taking place at the University of Santiago de Chile in 1951. Over the following few years until 1953, Platschek resided in both Montevideo and Buenos Aires. After returning to Germany in 1953, he encountered the likes of Max Ernst, Raoul Hausmann, Tristan Tzara, Hans Arp, and Asger Jorn in Paris. Subsequently, he relocated to Munich in 1955. The Munich Galerie van der Loo commenced showcasing his creations in 1957, regularly collaborating with the artist for the ensuing years. His participation in the XXIV. Venice Biennale in 1958 led Platschek and Jorn to produce a brochure for the eminent “Situationist International” movement. In the years that followed, Hans Platschek presented his oeuvre at various acclaimed international exhibitions, such as documenta II., where he received numerous accolades. In 1963, he was appointed to a guest lectureship at the prestigious Ulm School of Design. Platschek changed residences multiple times in the ensuing years, first to Rome, then to London, before ultimately settling in Hamburg. During this period, he authored numerous books related to art and its associated endeavors. In 1989, in honor of his 75th birthday, Galerie Gabriele von Loeper in Hamburg and Galerie van der Loo in Munich held individual exhibitions to showcase his work. In 1999, the Kunsthalle in Emden, a renowned museum in the East Friesland region of Germany, organized a major retrospective of Hans Platschek’s oeuvre. The artist passed away in Hamburg in 2000.

www.ftn-books.com has several Platschek titles available.

In his collection, Dutch artist Roland Schimmel presents a focus on optical anomalies produced by the human body’s response to certain visual input. Through paintings and animations created over the past two decades, he allows space for after-images, giving them a significant role. Schimmel’s perspective on the origin of this natural phenomenon is poignant: “I consider after-images as a reflection of my body’s yearning for its roots in light.”

Sophie Tates and Andreas Broeckmann elaborated on his work (in: cat. Deep Screen, Art in Digital Culture, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam 2008; text abbreviated by MK):
Schimmel meticulously crafts his abstract paintings (airbrush on canvas) and animations (computer-generated), emphasizing form and color in a way that evokes after-images, with dark and colorful dots punctuating the image, and vibrant hues in the background that often appear indistinct.
The visual impact is mesmerizing: the afterimage on the retina gliding over his artwork, not simply a representation, but an experience beyond the work itself. For a fleeting moment, the line between reality and projection blurs, and this perception is fleeting, as the image inevitably fades after a few seconds.
This body of work delves into the boundary between what is real and what is perceived. A quick glimpse at his art, a momentary closing of the eyes, and the complementary colors emerge on the retina, offering a glimpse into the untapped possibilities underlying every uttered word, every action, every choice: the complementary forms of existence itself.

www.ftn-books.com has one Schimmel title now available.

From the mid-1980s onward, Harald Klingelhöller has placed a significant emphasis on the intersection of sculpture and language within his works. Utilizing a diverse array of materials, ranging from fragile paper and cardboard to sturdy steel and granite, his creations establish a formal and conceptual dialogue between elements of narration and the visual arts. The poetic and metaphorical linguistic constructions that precede his sculptural works serve as more than just titles; they are intricately woven into the varying forms of his sculptures. In essence, his sculptures can be seen as three-dimensional interpretations of both written and spoken language, utilizing intonation, repetition, variation, and the linear flow of letters. The words and titles used in his works are drawn from a multitude of sources, including the press, poems, and medical or legal texts. He describes himself as a “linguistic flaneur.”

Klingelhöller has had several solo exhibitions dedicated to his works, such as “Schneefall erzählt” at Skulpturenhalle, Thomas Schütte Stiftung, Neuss-Düsseldorf, Germany in 2021; “Roads after the rain (double, star-shaped) (Strassen nach dem Regen (zweifach, sternför mig))” at Galerie Jocelyn Wolff, Romainville, France in 2021; “Resembling something not occurred (Kette)” at Jeffrey Starck, N.Y., USA in 2016; “Wo jeder Gegenstand, Seine eigenen Worte, So trägt, Wie jede Blum, ihren eigenen Duft, (Kette)” at Tucci Russo, Torre Pelice, Turin, Italy in 2015; “Harald Klingelhöller” at Skulpturenpark Waldfrieden, Cragg-Foundation, Wuppertal, Germany in 2014; “The Sea at Ebb Tide Dreamed” at Museu Serralves, Porto, Portugal in 2007; “…Wie Landschaften auf Worte reagieren…” at Städtische Galerie, Karlsruhe, Germany in 2005; “Alle Metaphern werden wahr – Skulpturen 1986-1997” at Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, München, Germany in 1997-1998; and exhibitions at Art Gallery of York University, Toronto, Canada in 1996, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, United Kingdom in 1990, and Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven.

www.ftn-books.com has several Klingelhöller titles available.