Ujjayi’s Jopurney,

Kehrer, Germany

by Maxine Henryson

Essay by Mario Kramer

Ujjayi’s Journey was photographed during five trips to India between 1996 and 2008. My love for India and its diversity, history, culture, humor and religious rituals increased with each visit. The spiritual aspect of Indian culture was of particular interest to me, especially the Mahadevi (Great Goddess), who can manifest herself in multiple forms, and Darsan, the process of worship whereby the devotee views the deity and the deity views the devotee. Ujjayi’s Journey is a visual poem in which I explore religious coexistence, rituals, the female world and nature. I tell the story of my search for the portrayal of the divine-as-feminine within India’s contemporary culture, linking the present to the past.  —Maxine Henryson

Playing with Form: Neo-Concrete Art from Brazil,

Dickinson Roundell, New York

by Olivier Berggruen

Essays by Yve-Alain Bois, Olivier Berggruen, and Tessa Packard

    Playing With Form: Concrete Art from Brazil emphasizes the articulation between two of Brazil’s most enriched art movements, the Concrete and the Neo-Concrete. “The Basis of Concrete Art” manifesto from 1930 states that painting should be constructed without the association of figures, nature or emotion, and thereby consist of planes and colors. In response to the European influence of Concrete Art in Brazil, a group of artists, including Clark and Pape, published the Neo-Concrete manifesto in 1959, which called for art to become more expressive and engaging. This exhibition illustrates the development of Neo-Concrete artists who reexamined the geometric, purist aesthetic of Concrete Art by infusing rational forms with dynamism and a sensorial aesthetic. According to curator Olivier Berggruen, “the European sensibility and geometric language which these artists pursued in the Fifties, develops and sheds its rationalistic and mechanistic character, creating a style very much its own.”

Dusty Boynton, Out of Line,

Denise Bibro Fine Arts, New York

Essays by Donald Kuspit, and Joan Ellis

    Dusty Boynton’s art isn’t as easy and casual as it appears. Her characters-human, animal, and hybrid-are childlike, and scrawled, often staring straight out from the picture surface. To invest these figures, as Boynton does, with individual personalities and emotional weight, as well as with the ability to relate psychologically to one another, is a real artistic feat. This is why the influences and associations in her work are of the highest order. There’s a hint of a de Kooning woman leer’s in one painting, the suggestion of a Dubuffet scribbled mouth in another, and evocations of Ken Kiff’s fantasy world and Paula Rego’s claustrophobic anxieties elsewhere. But Boynton’s creations are far more than the sum of these influences.

-Robert Ayers, ART News

Marina Abramovic, The Artist Is Present,

MoMA, New York

By Klaus Biesenbach

Essays by Klaus Biesenbach, Arthur C. Danto, Chrissie Iles, Nancy Spector, and Jovana Stokić

    Since the beginning of her career, in Belgrade in the late 1960s, Marina Abramović has been a pioneer of performance art, creating some of the most important works in the field. This catalogue documents approximately fifty of the artist's ephemeral time- and media-based works from throughout her career, including re-creations by other performers and a new work performed by the artist for the exhibition. The volume spans more than four decades of Abramović's interventions, sound pieces, video works, installations, photographs, and solo performances as well as her collaborative performances with the German artist Ulay. An accompanying CD with audio commentary by Abramović guides the reader through the book.

Aernout Mik,

MoMA, New York

By Laurence Kardish.

Essays by Laurence Kardish, Kelly Sidley, and Michael Taussig

    Published to accompany a retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art—Mik's first in the United States—this volume is a vivid exploration of the artist's work and process. Laurence Kardish, Senior Curator in the Museum's Department of Film, discusses the unique creative aspects of Mik's installations, and Michael Taussig, professor of anthropology at Columbia University, investigates how the artist's work changes viewers' perception of reality while reinforcing the norms of visual culture. Abundantly illustrated with stills and the artist's own drawings, Aernout Mik features detailed descriptions of the installations, an exhibition history, and a bibliography, making it the most comprehensive volume about Mik and his work available in English.

Into the Sunset,

MoMA, New York

By Eva Respini

    The development of photography coincided with the exploration and settlement of the American West, and since the opening of the frontier the medium has helped shape the perception of the West's physical and social landscape. Into the Sunset examines how photography has pictured, established, and transformed the image of the American West, from 1850 to the present. Published to accompany a major exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, this dynamic survey charts changing myths and cultural attitudes about the West through the more than 120 photographs reproduced in its plate section and an expansive essay by Eva Respini, Assistant Curator in the Museum's Department of Photography. The book brings together work by Robert Frank, Darius Kinsey, Dorothea Lange, Edward Ruscha, Cindy Sherman, and Carleton E. Watkins, among many others, arranged thematically in engaging spreads to highlight the artist' differing views of the American West's land and people.

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    Website for Ted Muehling Jewelry and Objects, New York