Edited by Alex Klein. Text by Liz Deschenes, Alex Kitnick, Alex Klein, Jenni Sorkin.
Since the 1970s, Chicago-based artist Barbara Kasten (born 1936) has developed her expansive practice of photography through the lens of many disciplines, including sculpture, painting, theater, textile and installation. Spanning her nearly five-decade engagement with abstraction, light and architectonic form, this publication situates Kasten's practice within current conversations around sculpture and photography. Kasten was one of the first artists to be invited by Polaroid to use its new large-format film, and it was with this that she made many of her best-known works. In the mid-1980s she stepped out of the studio and began working with large architectural spaces that were symbolic of both economic and cultural capital. Barbara Kasten: Stages is the first major survey of her work. The publication includes a biography of the artist, a conversation between Kasten and artist Liz Deschenes, and new essays by curator Alex Klein, and art historians Alex Kitnick and Jenni Sorkin.
Featured image is reproduced from Barbara Kasten: Stages.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Hyperallergic
Harry Swartz-Turfle
Her work lives in the boundaries between appearances and structure, which can only be mediated through experience.
Metropolis
Misha Volf
Kasten's subjects are for her as much real spaces and things that she manipulates, reshapes, and occupies, as they are instrumental props useful only toward the ultimate goal of the photographs.
Metropolis Magazine
Misha Volf
Kasten's subjects are for her as much real spaces and things that she manipulates, reshapes, and occupies, as they are instrumental props useful only toward the ultimate goal of the photographs… She masterfully deconstructs architecture and materiality.
Before you delve into our new catalogue, take another look at Barbara Kasten's "Construct NYC-4" (1983), reproduced on the front cover from JRP | Ringier's excellent monograph accompanying her exhibition at ICA Philadelphia. Glanced at quickly, this image might seem to be a digital manipulation. But it's not; it's "real." Kasten's working process combines sculpture (she constructs three-dimensional "stage-sets"), performance (she physically moves within and around her props and lights them theatrically) and photography (she sets up her camera to frame a particular two-dimensional image). The resulting "reality" that Kasten shows us is the product of an individual act of seeing. As Andy Grundberg has eloquently written, "the photographs remind us that what we see depends on how we choose to see it." continue to blog
"I dream about work. I'm really so obsessed with it, I can't wait to get back in the studio because I think I know what I have to do next. But sometimes I try what I've envisioned is the answer, and it's not it. Sometimes I push and I push and it's like trying to put a round peg in a square hole. But just when you are giving up, there is an answer. It's almost like you need to push yourself to the point of such intensity, and it's when you take that breath afterward that it comes, doesn't it?" Chicago-based Barbara Kasten has been working in photography, sculpture, painting, theater, textile and installation since the 1970s. Always respected, it seems the world has suddenly caught on to how interesting the work really is. In addition to gracing the cover of our Fall 2015 catalog, Kasten's work is the subject of a critically acclaimed career retrospective at the ICA Philadelphia through August 16. "Construct 32" (1986) is reproduced from the exhibition catalog, Barbara Kasten: Stages, one of our favorite books of the coming season. continue to blog
"Construct XXII" (1983) is reproduced from Barbara Kasten: Stages, the exhibition catalog to ICA Philadelphia's eye-opening career retrospective of this important but previously overlooked artist. In conversation with Liz Deschenes, Kasten comments on the Construct series. "It was a term connected to Bauhaus ideology. The work was a construction that was made on site to be photographed. It also relates to the fact that an object is being photographed and yet part of the idea is to deconstruct that reality and make it an abstraction rather than representing the real thing. What always fascinated me about doing photography in this way is presenting something in three dimensions and yet denying it as well, with a flat surface. I could paint those shapes—and I certainly looked at enough painting, such as Kandinsky, who used similar constructed forms—but I was bringing the contemporary into it by using photography. I was using photography in a way that it was not supposed to be used." continue to blog
FORMAT: Pbk, 8.75 x 10.75 in. / 208 pgs / 150 color / 25 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $45.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $60 ISBN: 9783037644102 PUBLISHER: JRP|Ringier AVAILABLE: 5/26/2015 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of print AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: WORLD Excl FR DE AU CH
Published by JRP|Ringier. Edited by Alex Klein. Text by Liz Deschenes, Alex Kitnick, Alex Klein, Jenni Sorkin.
Since the 1970s, Chicago-based artist Barbara Kasten (born 1936) has developed her expansive practice of photography through the lens of many disciplines, including sculpture, painting, theater, textile and installation. Spanning her nearly five-decade engagement with abstraction, light and architectonic form, this publication situates Kasten's practice within current conversations around sculpture and photography.
Kasten was one of the first artists to be invited by Polaroid to use its new large-format film, and it was with this that she made many of her best-known works. In the mid-1980s she stepped out of the studio and began working with large architectural spaces that were symbolic of both economic and cultural capital.
Barbara Kasten: Stages is the first major survey of her work. The publication includes a biography of the artist, a conversation between Kasten and artist Liz Deschenes, and new essays by curator Alex Klein, and art historians Alex Kitnick and Jenni Sorkin.
