Edited by Katrin Steffen, Hans-Michael Herzog. Text by Luis Camnitzer, Sabeth Buchmann, Maren Welsch.
German-born, Uruguay and New York-based artist Luis Camnitzer (born 1937) confronts awkward social and political issues head-on, always inflecting his uneasy subject matter with a keen sense of humor and irony. Over the last 40 years, Camnitzer has developed an international reputation, not only as an artist, but also as a critic, educator and theorist. A leader in the realm of conceptual and political art in Uruguay, he works in a variety of media, including installation, printmaking, drawing and photography, to explore the former Uruguayan dictatorship, and more generally the violence that governments and systems of power inflict on individuals. In his chilling 2008 work "Last Words," Camnitzer collected the final statements of death row inmates in Texas, assembling a work that compels viewers towards the very brink of mortality. This publication surveys Camnitzer's influential body of work, from 1966 to the present.
"Among Camnitzer's first Conceptual works is a synthetic board bearing the following text: This Is a Mirror. You Are a Written Sentence. The Statement is per se incomprehensible, ostensibly eschewing any logical construction. This association of two absurdities heightens the viewers' consternation, and with it their curiosity, and the piece becomes an inquiry into the power of language beyond the merely declaratory."
Caption and image both excerpted from "Luis Camnitzer.
"Something I was thinking about recently is that all of my education, from primary school on, consisted of learning the answers to questions that had already been formulated. They never taught me to ask new questions that did not yet have a known answer. That's where art and education should meet. They should form an indivisible nucleus right from the start instead of leaving art for later, as if it were a secondary activity. That's why when you discover that difference you do so with resentment. That's when subversion is turned into something negative. In fact, subversion should start at the very moment you begin to study, it should be a form of questioning and a constructive process."
FORMAT: Hbk, 9.75 x 11.25 in. / 226 pgs / 90 color / 60 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $60.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $70 ISBN: 9783775726528 PUBLISHER: Hatje Cantz AVAILABLE: 10/31/2010 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: FLAT40 PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of print AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: NA LA
Published by Hatje Cantz. Edited by Katrin Steffen, Hans-Michael Herzog. Text by Luis Camnitzer, Sabeth Buchmann, Maren Welsch.
German-born, Uruguay and New York-based artist Luis Camnitzer (born 1937) confronts awkward social and political issues head-on, always inflecting his uneasy subject matter with a keen sense of humor and irony. Over the last 40 years, Camnitzer has developed an international reputation, not only as an artist, but also as a critic, educator and theorist. A leader in the realm of conceptual and political art in Uruguay, he works in a variety of media, including installation, printmaking, drawing and photography, to explore the former Uruguayan dictatorship, and more generally the violence that governments and systems of power inflict on individuals. In his chilling 2008 work "Last Words," Camnitzer collected the final statements of death row inmates in Texas, assembling a work that compels viewers towards the very brink of mortality. This publication surveys Camnitzer's influential body of work, from 1966 to the present.
