{"title":"1990S","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"heavy-burschi","title":"Heavy Burschi","description":"\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eHeavy Burschi\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e (\"Heavy Guy\" or \"Heavy Lad\") is one of Martin Kippenberger's most disruptive bodies of work, developed between 1989 and 1990. It was first presented as an installation at the Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne (10 November–22 December 1991), comprising a large metal refuse container filled with destroyed paintings, accompanied by thirty-three framed colour photographs documenting their destruction.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe work's origin, however, is more complex than the installation itself, evoking Kippenberger's interest in self-mythology and institutional critique. The discarded paintings were not originals but copies of Kippenberger's own works, executed by his assistant (Merlin Carpenter) at the artist's request. Judged by Kippenberger to be \"too well done\", the canvases were slashed, dismantled, and thrown into the refuse container, but only after being meticulously photographed. The resulting installation is a complex gesture of vandalism in which originality and authorship are simultaneously negated and reaffirmed.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe publication accompanying the exhibition concludes with a reproduction of Kristine McKenna's critical review of Kippenberger's previous exhibition at Luhring Augustine Hetzler Gallery in Santa Monica, originally published in the \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eLos Angeles Reader\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e. While dismissing the paintings as derivative and insufficiently considered, McKenna nevertheless acknowledged the artist's riotous attempt:\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\"A social critic who transforms the trash of a corrupted culture into ironic commentary on the personality crisis of the human race, Kippenberger isn't venturing on any new turf in pointing out our collective failures as a society; beneath its veneer of flashy provocation, his work isn't terribly original and is often poorly thought out.\"\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eMore than any of Kippenberger's projects, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eHeavy Burschi\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e reveals the artist simultaneously embracing and undermining the logic of the art market. Through the destruction of commissioned copies of his own work, he erases the distinction between original and reproduction.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn 2026, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eHeavy Burschi\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e was re-staged by curators Jean de Loisy and Margaux Bonopera for the exhibition \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eSUSPECTS – Van Gogh, Tricksters \u0026amp; Co.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e at the Fondation Vincent van Gogh in Arles.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"metabooks-dev","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53799099695443,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1068\/8898\/6963\/files\/Heavy.png?v=1779232265"},{"product_id":"james-bond-dr-no","title":"James Bond. Dr No","description":"\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eGraham’s interest in expanding the boundaries of existing texts and revealing the creative potential of marginal interventions is exemplified in his 1991 intervention into Ian Fleming’s “Dr. No”. By inserting a full-page bookmark between pages 56 and 57, Graham extends and subtly redirects the narrative through a detailed account of a centipede inching across James Bond’s body. This fictional addition numbered 56a unfolds with a sensibility that lies somewhere between Balzac’s richly descriptive realism and Kafka’s uncanny logic, transforming a seemingly peripheral insertion into a potentially integral narrative event.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"metabooks-dev","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53801219490131,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1068\/8898\/6963\/files\/JamesBond_f4080abe-d4e0-4922-938b-95ba92d82b39.png?v=1779270792"},{"product_id":"gustave-flaubert-un-coeur-simple","title":"Gustave Flaubert. Un cœur simple","description":"\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003eSherrie Levine has long explored radical forms of appropriation. While her investigations into representation and authenticity have typically involved recontextualising the work of renowned visual artists, including Walker Evans, Constantin Brâncuși, Vincent van Gogh, and Edgar Degas, here she turns to Gustave Flaubert’s nineteenth-century short story “Un cœur simple”.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003eThe story follows Félicité, a devoted and deeply religious servant whose shifting affections culminate in her mistaking a stuffed parrot for the Holy Ghost. By republishing and re-typesetting an early edition of the story, Levine questions conventional notions of authorship and originality.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003eProduced in 1991 as a limited edition of fifty copies, this literal and literary act of appropriation predates Richard Prince’s “The Catcher in the Rye” by two decades.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Metabooks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54018623635795,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1068\/8898\/6963\/files\/Levine.png?v=1781683606"},{"product_id":"reconstructed-history","title":"Reconstructed History","description":"\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eA collection of fifty ink drawings in which Mike Kelley intervenes on reproductions from American school textbooks—illustrations, photographs, engravings, and cartoons depicting idealised figures and events from American history. Working directly on the printed page, he introduces a note of iconoclasm through loose but well-considered doodles, echoing the vandalism of a schoolchild’s textbook. The drawings are bound in the format of a high-school yearbook, bringing reverence and disruption into the same object.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e“Here we have a collection of grotesqueries, defacements of some of the most cherished images of our American past. Who could be responsible for such defilements?” writes the artist in his preface, “what could be the purpose in tarnishing the heroic figures and events we hold so dear? These are questions one is compelled to ask; yet might questions be better put to the images themselves? We might instead ask, why do these pictures provoke addition? What has been subtracted from them?”\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eKelley’s introduction shifts attention from authorship to omission, asking not who altered the images, but what they already exclude. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eReconstructed History\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e treats the schoolbook as an ideological construct rather than a neutral record, and its interventions as a form of counter-history that exposes the fragility of national narratives. The heroic image, in this reading, sustains its authority through what it leaves out.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe work strikingly resonates with Chris Marker’s meditation in \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eSans Soleil\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e (1983), where memory is described not as the opposite of forgetting but as “its lining”: we do not remember, but rewrite, much as history itself is rewritten.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Metabooks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54027555930451,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1068\/8898\/6963\/files\/KelleyCover_b091cc5f-a662-4271-8625-e006aa2749a2.png?v=1789370959"},{"product_id":"111","title":"111","description":"\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eRather than using the photocopy as a way to create identical copies, Alighiero Boetti saw it as a tool for exploring the relationship between human ideas and technology. Artist’s books such as this one, as well as the expanded version \"\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eI quindici libri rossi – 111\"\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e, reflect his ongoing interest in systems and the balance between order and chance.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e“Already in ’69, in Turin, when I used to go to the Rank Xerox showroom with my little coins in my pocket, I had so many ideas”, Boetti stated in 1991. “I would say: the photocopier is not just an office machine; by the year 2000 we’ll all have one in our living rooms! Give me one, and I’ll document some of its creative applications. I didn’t mean manipulating the mechanism or the ink, as some people had done, from Munari onward. No, what interested me was the standard application. But, for instance, I would have put it out on the balcony when it starts to rain: one drop, ten drops, a thousand drops…”\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBoetti was fascinated that a photocopier could transform a simple, mechanical action into a process open to variation and surprise. In \"\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e111\"\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e, each of the 111 photocopies reproduces a different newspaper clipping, turning fragments of everyday information into a serial composition. The title \"\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e111\"\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e is both a palindrome and the principle behind the work’s method of production: through repetition, a simple structure can generate countless possibilities. It suggests a kind of “contained infinity”, where endless variations unfold within a fixed system.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAs in other works made with photocopying technologies such as \"\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eNove Xerox Anne Marie\"\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e (1969), \"\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eDossier Postale\" \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e(1969–1971), and \"\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAutoritratto\"\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e (1971), Boetti questioned the traditional role of the artist as the sole creator. Instead, he allowed the machine, the process, and chance to become active participants in the making of the work.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Metabooks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54027795366227,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1068\/8898\/6963\/files\/111_4d34f598-e891-4950-8206-01fa3b1290a2.png?v=1789195806"},{"product_id":"quartett-88","title":"Quartett 88","description":"\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eTime is central to Hanne Darboven's work. Historical records and chronological systems are the primary vehicles in her career-long exploration of time and memory. Writer and curator Okwui Enwezor argued that her archival practice is not simply a repository of information but a structure of historical consciousness.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003ePublished to accompany Darboven's exhibition at Portikus, Frankfurt am Main (1990), this artist's book structures its numerical timepieces around four women who marked history: Marie Curie, Rosa Luxemburg, Gertrude Stein, and Virginia Woolf. In other words, Darboven’s feminine pantheon. These figures provide historical points of reference, yet the true subject of the work is the structure of time itself. Their individual lives become structural elements within a larger temporal system, where personal history is situated alongside scientific discovery, political transformation, and cultural production.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAt the centre of Darboven's complex mathematical operations lies the year 1988, when she started to “orchestrate” this intellectual quartet of women. Interspersed with portraits sourced from encyclopaedias and excerpts from journals, the intricate calendars unfolding across more than 700 pages resist narrative in favour of a rigorous conceptual system. The result reveals an artist whose philosophical understanding of time and analytical engagement with feminism are at once mystifying and deeply structuring.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Metabooks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54061174620499,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1068\/8898\/6963\/files\/Quartett88.png?v=1782112653"},{"product_id":"albert-vs-history","title":"albert vs. history","description":"\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eConceived on the occasion of Albert Oehlen’s solo exhibition at Kunsthalle Basel in 1997, this publication enacts Oehlen’s anachronistic dialogue with art history. His work is brought into dialogue with an expansive range of references, spanning Old Masters such as Johannes Vermeer and Pieter Bruegel the Elder to contemporaries including Gerhard Richter and Julian Schnabel. This index of names appears at the end of the publication as well as on the covers, where it is juxtaposed with an illustration of a medieval knight in full armour bearing a lance emblazoned with the initial \"O\". The armour closely resembles those depicted in the 16th-century \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eFreydal\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e tournament book, perhaps suggesting Oehlen’s characteristically understated challenge to the authority of art history. As with many of his artistic projects, Oehlen dedicated this publication to his friend Martin Kippenberger.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Metabooks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54061189398867,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1068\/8898\/6963\/files\/Oehlen.png?v=1782112990"},{"product_id":"the-uncanny","title":"The Uncanny","description":"\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e“The Uncanny” presents Mike Kelley as artist and curator, one year after his first major European exhibition at the ICA, London, in 1992. Organized by Sonsbeek 93 at the Gemeentemuseum Arnhem, Netherlands, in 1993, the curatorial project and its accompanying artist’s book represent the culmination of Kelley's long-term engagement with the Freudian concept of \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eDas Unheimliche\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e (1919), which describes the unsettling convergence of the familiar and the strange: \"The uncanny is in reality nothing new or alien, but something which is familiar and old-established in the mind and which has become alienated from it only through the process of repression.\"\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eExpanding on this notion, Kelley conceived an exhibition centred on memory, repression, anxiety, death, sexuality, and the grotesque. Prefaced by an original psychoanalytic and iconographic essay written by the artist, the exhibition brings together works by Robert Gober, Edward Kienholz, Martin Kippenberger, Sandy Skoglund, Cindy Sherman, and others, each exploring, in distinct ways, the disquieting nature of the ordinary. Through a carefully orchestrated juxtaposition of artworks and vernacular artefacts (including inflatable dolls, anatomical models, educational objects, and curiosities), Kelley stages an excavation of his own fears and obsessions, transforming the act of curating into one of psychological inquiry and liberation.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Metabooks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54144516489555,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1068\/8898\/6963\/files\/TheUncanny.png?v=1782829088"},{"product_id":"letters-from-wittgenstein-abridged-in-ghent","title":"Letters from Wittgenstein, Abridged in Ghent","description":"\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eLudwig Wittgenstein’s thought permeates Joseph Kosuth’s conceptual practice. In this artist’s book, the influence becomes literal. Kosuth takes as his starting point the correspondence between the British philosopher and architect Paul Engelmann, developing a parallel, anachronistic narrative through text and image. In 1925, Engelmann and Wittgenstein were commissioned by the philosopher’s sister, Margaret Stonborough-Wittgenstein – known, among other things, for posing for Gustav Klimt – to design her house in Vienna. The three-year project unfolded alongside a profound friendship, documented in an important corpus of letters published posthumously in 1967.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eOver a discoloured facsimile of Engelmann’s publication of philosophical meditations and exchanges with Wittgenstein, Kosuth pastes photographs documenting the architectural transformation of the city of Ghent, where the book was commissioned and published. The two narratives unfold in parallel and complement one another: while the text traces the construction of a building – and a friendship – the photographs bear witness to the destruction and profound transformation of a city over the course of its recent history.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Metabooks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54275526820179,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1068\/8898\/6963\/files\/KosuthWit.png?v=1783781076"},{"product_id":"36-perpetual-photos-1982-89","title":"36 Perpetual Photos 1982\/89","description":"\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eNew York–based conceptual artist Allan McCollum has spent more than five decades exploring how objects acquire and shift meaning within a world of contradiction. Continuing this line of inquiry, “36 Perpetual Photos” focuses on framed paintings in movies. The publication unfolds as a sequence of screenshots (photographs taken directly from his TV) paired with 36 paintings, each reframed and enlarged by the artist until the image dissolves into grainy abstraction.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eConceived as an artist’s book, this simple yet sophisticated publication accompanied a comprehensive exhibition at the IVAM, Centre del Carme in Valencia, bringing together McCollum’s “Plastic Surrogates,” “Perfect Vehicles,” “Perpetual Photos,” “Individual Works,” and “Drawings”.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Metabooks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54305210827091,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1068\/8898\/6963\/files\/AllanMc.png?v=1784039048"},{"product_id":"an-archive-for-current-issues","title":"An Archive for Current Issues","description":"","brand":"Metabooks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54317348684115,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1068\/8898\/6963\/files\/Iver_cover.png?v=1784129052"},{"product_id":"objekte-installationen-wandarbeiten","title":"Objekte, Installationen, Wandarbeiten","description":"\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThis collaborative artists’ book accompanied the eponymous exhibition at the NGBK, Berlin, December 1990–January 1991. The French-folded publication offers a balanced account of Cady Noland’s and Félix González-Torres’s responses to the excesses of 1980s postmodernism, bringing together critical texts by several art historians alongside writings by the artists themselves. Together, these contributions situate their work within a period marked by the collapse of Soviet communism and growing collective anxieties.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn his introductory essay, curator Frank Wagner examines how Cady Noland and Félix González-Torres use different strategies to reflect on American social and political issues. Noland confronts these subjects through chaotic installations of meticulously chained objects (beer cans, handcuffs, walking aids, and flags) as well as metal plates depicting episodes of American violence, including the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy, the kidnapping of Patricia Hearst, and mass shootings. By contrast, González-Torres approaches similar questions with poetic ambiguity. In \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eMirage\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e, for example, a pile of candies in the colors of the American flag invites visitors to take a piece, transforming political symbolism into a bittersweet, self-consuming act of participation. Though different in form and nature, the two artists’ strategies converge in their critique of a culture shaped by spectacle, violence, and individualism.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Metabooks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54335639519571,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1068\/8898\/6963\/files\/CadyandFelix.png?v=1784297134"},{"product_id":"richard-prince-fotos-schilderijen-objecten","title":"Richard Prince: foto's, schilderijen, objecten","description":"","brand":"Metabooks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54342302531923,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1068\/8898\/6963\/files\/Prince_Rotterdam_Cowboy.png?v=1784382677"},{"product_id":"skull-bunny-learn-to-read-art","title":"Skull Bunny \/ Learn to Read Art","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003eProduced as a promotional shopping bag for the joint Printed Matter\/Art Metropole booth at Art Basel, this multiple pairs two artists' work on a single functional object: Prince's \"Skull Bunny\" — a Playboy logo recast as a memento mori — on the front, and Weiner's text piece \"LEARN TO READ ART\" on the reverse.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Metabooks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54346525606227,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1068\/8898\/6963\/files\/LearnToReadArt.png?v=1784444896"},{"product_id":"i-shop-therefore-i-am","title":"I Shop Therefore I Am","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003eRiffing on Descartes' \"I think, therefore I am,\" Kruger swaps \"think\" for \"shop,\" overlaying her signature red-and-white Futura text on a found photograph of an outstretched hand to recast the philosophical foundation of selfhood as an act of consumption. Printed directly onto a functional retail bag, the work collapses the boundary between artwork and commodity — letting the object itself enact the critique it makes.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Metabooks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54346528063827,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1068\/8898\/6963\/files\/IshopthereforeIam_c34a6529-cf8b-4e26-b680-9077c0138ada.png?v=1789370405"},{"product_id":"p-i-i-t-l-perfect-is-in-the-louvre","title":"P.I.I.T.L. [Perfect is in the Louvre]","description":"\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eShortly after completing his studies in art and philosophy at the Wayne State University in Detroit, James Lee Byars moved to Kyoto in 1958, settling near the Temple of the Golden Pavilion for nearly a decade. Influenced by Japanese Buddhism, Shinto rituals, and Noh theatre, Byars crystallized an artistic practice that combined conceptual minimalism with contemplative disciplines. During this period, he became fascinated by Japanese paper, an interest that later materialized in works such as “The Mile-Long Paper Walk” (1965) and “The Accordion Scroll \/ The Perfect Painting” (1961), a 360 cm-long, 30 cm-wide band of folded paper. His paper constructions, often rolled, folded, or otherwise transformed, continued to evolve throughout his entire career.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eConceived as both a conceptual artwork and an artist’s publication, P.I.I.T.L. (Perfect Is in the Louvre) is connected to Byars’s live actions, including his “Apparition-Disparition” performance near the Louvre in Paris, during which he handed this folded publication directly to the audience. Perfection, particularly the word “perfect”, is a recurring theme in Byars’s work. He developed it into a personal and poetic inquiry, exploring the relationships between language and precious materials.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIssued as a folded printed multiple on thick Tintoretto Fedrigoni paper and set in Bodoni type, the work emulates the format and graphic style of Éditions de la NRF (Nouvelle Revue Française), published by Gallimard since 1911. Not only it pays a tribute to Gallimard, but also reifies Byars’s own practice, bringing together the institutional aura of the Louvre with the material language of the historical publishing house.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eJames Lee Byars’s fascination with folds and folded paper can be distilled in the phrase “This paper has undone me,” a famous line spoken by Cardinal Wolsey in William Shakespeare’s \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eHenry VIII\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e (Act III, Scene II), which Byars later adopted in his interviews and conversations.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Metabooks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54385761747283,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1068\/8898\/6963\/files\/PIITL.png?v=1784812965"},{"product_id":"why-i-got-into-art-vaseline-muses","title":"Why I Got Into Art (Vaseline Muses)","description":"\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003ePublished anonymously on the occasion of Mike Kelley’s solo exhibition \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWhy I Got into Art\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e at Jablonka Galerie, Cologne, in 1989, this publication might initially read as a pin-up sequence. Upon closer inspection, we encounter re-photographed images of 1970s feminist artists\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e – \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eincluding Yoko Ono, Carolee Schneemann, Hannah Wilke, and Lynda Benglis\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e – \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003edocumented in happenings, performances, guerrilla actions, avant-garde theatre, or gallery advertisements. To emulate the look of vintage soft-core adult magazines, Kelley photographed the original images through a Vaseline-smeared lens.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe question remains: is this really the reason Kelley “got into art”? Or, acting as the astute psychologist he was, does he play with stereotypes surrounding female corporeality in order to lure the viewer into the role of a voyeur?\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Metabooks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54386085757267,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1068\/8898\/6963\/files\/WhyIGot.png?v=1784815495"},{"product_id":"evergreen-book-for-everybody-nobody-and-me","title":"Evergreen Book for everybody nobody and me","description":"","brand":"Metabooks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54397007954259,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1068\/8898\/6963\/files\/evergreen.png?v=1784902437"},{"product_id":"the-complete-life-and-work-seen-through-the-pink-glasses-of-desire","title":"The complete life and work, seen through the pink glasses of desire","description":"","brand":"Metabooks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54543306654035,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1068\/8898\/6963\/files\/DSC4311.png?v=1786374874"},{"product_id":"song-of-the-thrush","title":"Song of the Thrush","description":"","brand":"Metabooks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54543485469011,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1068\/8898\/6963\/files\/DSC4322.png?v=1786375980"},{"product_id":"ajar-a-history-of-burnt-pans","title":"Ajar (A History of Burnt Pans)","description":"","brand":"Metabooks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54552079106387,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1068\/8898\/6963\/files\/DSC4324.png?v=1786439221"},{"product_id":"mund-auf-augen-zu","title":"Mund auf - Augen zu","description":"","brand":"Metabooks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54578847908179,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1068\/8898\/6963\/files\/DSC4336.png?v=1786626025"},{"product_id":"moi-aussi-jaurais-peur-si-je-rencontrais-un-ange-2-l-anatomie-d-un-ange","title":"Moi aussi, j'aurais peur si je rencontrais un ange. 2: L’anatomie d’un ange","description":"","brand":"Metabooks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54595547726163,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1068\/8898\/6963\/files\/DSC4423.png?v=1786798261"},{"product_id":"moi-aussi-jaurais-peur-si-je-rencontrais-un-ange-1-la-bataille-de-midway","title":"Moi aussi, j'aurais peur si je rencontrais un ange. 1: La bataille de Midway","description":"","brand":"Metabooks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54595558474067,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1068\/8898\/6963\/files\/DSC4422.png?v=1786798585"},{"product_id":"kunst-gegen-essen","title":"Kunst gegen Essen","description":"","brand":"Metabooks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54595582886227,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1068\/8898\/6963\/files\/DSC4390.png?v=1786799290"},{"product_id":"bilder-von-der-strasse","title":"Bilder von der Straße","description":"","brand":"Metabooks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54595749904723,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1068\/8898\/6963\/files\/DSC4405.png?v=1786802791"},{"product_id":"waterfall-rapture-postcards-of-falling-water","title":"Waterfall Rapture: Postcards of Falling Water","description":"","brand":"Metabooks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54638767374675,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1068\/8898\/6963\/files\/DSC4461.png?v=1787228862"},{"product_id":"facsimile-coop-zurich","title":"Facsimile [Coop Zurich]","description":"\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThis facsimile catalogue of products from a Zurich Coop supermarket appears to extend a project that the duo initiated two years earlier, in 1991, as part of “Küchenausstellung” (The Kitchen Show), Hans Ulrich Obrist’s first curatorial project:\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e“One conviction I had was that it could be interesting to do something smaller, after the gigantism of some of the 1980s art scene which seemed unsustainable after the crash of 1987. [...] It was a way of making a sprawling exhibition that also took visitors on a domestic tour of the city. And then both Fischli and Weiss and Christian Boltanski suggested to me that perhaps I was looking too hard, that the solution could be in my own flat, as with the Edgar Allan Poe story ‘The Purloined Letter.’ And we began to think, and an answer occurred to us: my kitchen,” Obrist recalls in a 2014 article for The Paris Review.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eFor “The Kitchen Show”, Fischli\/Weiss photographed Obrist’s kitchen shelves, filling the cupboard above the sink with cans and packets of food purchased from a local grocer. As Ileana Parvu notes in “The reproduction of objects” (\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eSciences Po – Arts \u0026amp; Sociétés\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e, no. 118), the intervention allowed the domestic space to become an exhibition space without relinquishing its everyday function. Rather than explicitly critiquing consumer culture, it introduced its visual and material language into the context of art.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe 1993 facsimile similarly transforms a common commercial document into an object of artistic and curatorial inquiry. Its attention to the aesthetics of everyday consumerism resonates with Fischli\/Weiss’s practice while echoing Obrist’s ongoing interest in curating through acts of selection and arrangement, particularly within unspectacular places.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Metabooks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54668749570387,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1068\/8898\/6963\/files\/DSC4479.png?v=1787488708"}],"url":"https:\/\/metabooks.art\/collections\/1990-s.oembed","provider":"Metabooks","version":"1.0","type":"link"}