Germano Celant

The art of Gianni Piacentino (born 1945) represents a universe of perfection, calculation and concentration, one of geometrical and primary forms. Combining this sensibility with an appreciation of pop culture, Piacentino turned to the world of velocity and transportation including cars, motorcycles and planes, creating industrial-inspired sculptures that straddle the line between design and art. This three-volume publication comprises more than 90 works, retracing the artist's output in reverse chronological order, starting with his most recent works from 2015 and working backwards to those from 1965, when Piacentino veered between Pop art and minimalism but ultimately developed a practice that fit neither category. Featuring images of sketches and art works, text by Germano Celant, a conversation with the artist and a chronology of his exhibition history, this is a handsome introduction to the artist's work.

Pier Paolo Calzolari, born in 1943 in Bologna, is recognized as a leading figure of the Arte Povera movement and a seminal artist whose practice spans painting, sculpture, video, audio, text, performance, installation, architecture, light, and video. Through the use of both ordinary and unconventional materials, such as lead, salt, neon, ice, tobacco, moss, fire, and butter, Calzolari explores transformation of matter and ephemeral states—exploiting an underlying fragility in his materials. This book focuses on the artist’s work over the last 25 years and coincides with concurrent exhibitions (April 28–June 2, 2012) at Marianne Boesky Gallery and Pace Gallery, the artist’s first exhibitions in New York since 1988.

A groundbreaking work edited by Germano Celant in collaboration with the artist and her New York studio that enriches our knowledge of Louise Bourgeois Louise Bourgeois, who has produced art since the 1930s, began in the 1990s to use her clothes and the clothes of her loved ones as components in her sculptures and drawings. It is as much a reincarnation of her past and her childhood as a confirmation of her relationship with memory. Her visual approach to fabrics transforms decorative accessories into emotional and personal references which, especially in her Cells and later in her drawings, create representations of a tormented and at the same time powerful womanhood. Further development of the artist’s work began in 2002: exploiting the iridescent colours and formal structural properties of pieces of her clothing, she created “The Fabric Drawings,” astonishing works alternating between floral figurative pieces and chromatic abstractions. This set of images is collected here in its entirety for the first time, constituting the closest thing yet to a general catalogue.