Cecilia Alemani

The most comprehensive and up-to-date book about the vibrant public art program of New York’s global destination, the High Line The High Line, New York City’s famed elevated rail line-turned-greenway, hosts millions of visitors annually, providing a unique space for encountering art and performance. Elevated surveys the rich, multifaceted offerings of its public art program, High Line Art, presenting works and projects from the last decade by key artists from around the world. The book features a world-class array of projects by artists including Simone Leigh, Paola Pivi, Sam Durant, Jordan Casteel, Cecilia Vicuña, Sheila Hicks, El Anatsui, Phyllida Barlow, Faith Ringgold, Barbara Kruger, Zoe Leonard, and many others. It documents the creative evolution and vibrant cultural programming of High Line Art, which offers a city-scale canvas for artists and performers to interact with, seen in abundant photographs that chronicle the projects across the passage of seasons in the park. Through voluminous photographs and unique conversations with the participating artists, as well as essays by key critics such as Julia Bryan-Wilson and Aruna D’Souza, this book surveys the dozens of open-air installations, billboards, murals, video projects, and participatory events that demonstrate the unique and vibrant impact High Line Art has had on both New York City and the art world.

The 59th International Art Exhibition, in Venice from 23 April to 27 November 2022, is titled The Milk of Dreams. Named after a book by Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington 1917–2011), the Exhibition takes the artist’s fanciful creatures and many other figures of transformation as companions on an imaginary journey through metamorphoses of the body and of humanity. Volume I of the catalogue is dedicated to the International Exhibition, curated by Cecilia Alemani. This volume includes the Curator’s original contribution as well as a wide range of illustrations and critical essays by some of today’s most cutting-edge thinkers and writers. Each artist is introduced by a critical text as well as an iconographic apparatus. This volume also includes a wide array of original writing, conversations, and reprinted texts that capture many of the concerns set forth by the exhibition while expanding to broader and equally timely preoccupations. Volume II of the catalogue presents the Participating Countries and the Collateral Events of the 59th International Art Exhibition. It includes lavishly illustrated texts exploring the various projects that will be on display in Venice from 23 April to 27 November 2022. The graphic identity of the Biennale Arte 2022 and the publication's design are by A Practice for Everyday Life, London.

Three artists have been selected to represent Italy at the 2017 Venice Biennale: Giorgio Andreotta Calo, Roberto Cuoghi, and Adelita Husni-Bey. They are relatively young artists, belonging to the same generation as the curator, and have been present on the international art scene since the year 2000. Their works speak global languages but are closely linked to the culture of Italy, without overlooking its current cosmopolitan aspect. Giorgio Andreotta Calo focuses on dialogues between space and artistic action, Roberto Cuoghi the best known of the three carries out research into memory and time, and Adelita Husni-Bey involves the public in artistic practices connected with history and social issues.

Juxtaposing the heavenly and the debased, the innocent and the perverse, the celestial and the microscopic, Polish artist Jakub Julian Ziolkowski (born 1980) traces his artistic lineage from Hieronymus Bosch to Philip Guston. Ziolkowski's work makes a startling demand: it asks the eye not to glance but to hold focus on the unraveling chaos of his images, and to embrace the hallucinatory vehemence of his vision. Part of the "2000 Words" series, conceived and commissioned by Massimiliano Gioni, and published by the Deste Foundation for Contemporary Art, this volume presents the entirety of the Polish artist's works in the Dakis Joannou Collection and includes an essay by Cecilia Alemani that examines how the artist's work searches the body for a nonhierarchical image of the universe.