Museum Exhibition Catalogues, Monographs, Artist's Projects, Curatorial Writings and Essays
Rodney Graham’s books, sculptures, photographs, films, objects, paintings and music; his artistic involvements with Sigmund Freud, Edgar Allen Poe, Herman Melville, Donald Judd, Richard Wagner, the Brothers Grimm and Pablo Picasso; his practice of borrowing from, referencing, turning upside down and adapting other works and authors; his constant oscillating between quotation and autobiography, between the discourse of the professional and the pose of the amateur, offer, when taken together, such a broad field for critical, interpretive and theoretical approaches that looking back on 30 years of his work, one sometimes has the impression the artist is merely a postmodern fiction, the protagonist of an art novel related to the late twentieth century’s ambitious zeitgeist by an endless series of references and allusions, a figure who, as it were, goes about in disguise behind his various possible interpretations. This is not to say, however, that the character R.G. in any way disappears; on the contrary, despite all his different disguises he remains palpably present in the work, so much so that one cannot get rid of the suspicion that this is a person trying to construct a kind of self-portrait, or rather, trying to sound out allusively and theatrically all the possibilities that remain open to art in his time.
--Julian Heynen, excerpted from the essay, “A Kind of Author,” published in Through the Forest.
Published by JRP|Ringier. Edited with text by Alessandro Vincentelli. Text by Patrik Andersson, Briony Fer, Robert Linsley, Sarah Munro, Harry Pearson.
The figure of the artist remains a central subject of investigation for Vancouver artist Rodney Graham (born 1949), who is known for straddling many vocations simultaneously: painter, photographer, writer, philosopher, actor, psychologist, scientist and musician. This new monograph, published for Graham’s exhibition at the BALTIC Centre in the UK, gathers works made between 1994 and 2017—in particular his photographic lightboxes and his musical production—that focus on the self-portrait. Graham shows himself starring in various fictional roles (artist, musician, actor, lighthouse keeper, paddler, reader). In her essay, Briony Fer observes that “as much as Graham makes pictures that cohere as mise-en-scčnes, and that operate self-reflexively to speculate on the very mechanics of the image, so it is impossible to keep all the allusions in check.”
Published by Hatje Cantz. Edited with text by Ingvild Goetz, Leo Lencsés, Karsten Löckemann. Text by Tacita Dean, Kim Gordon, Rodney Graham, Dorothea Zwirner.
The photographs, objects, paintings, films, texts and compositions of Canadian artist Rodney Graham (born 1949) contain references to philosophy and literature, and to the history of art and culture. This publication provides substantial insight into his extensive artistic work over the last 40 years.
Published by Christine Burgin/Donald Young. Text by Iwona Blazwick, John Slyce, Candy Stobbs, Desiderius Erasmus.
A new work by Vancouver conceptualist Rodney Graham (born 1949) is always guaranteed to surprise and amuse in equal measure. Indeed, the idea of amusement, espoused by Duchamp as an aesthetic aspiration, is expanded by Graham in British Weathervanes to include the idea of folly, as espoused by the sixteenth-century humanist scholar Erasmus, author of The Praise of Folly (1511). Graham's Erasmus weathervane, made for the cupola of the Whitechapel Gallery in London, shows the author, modeled by the artist, reading a book while riding a horse backwards (elaborating on the anecdote that Erasmus wrote The Praise of Folly on horseback). Erasmus' weather-blown obliviousness continues Graham's inquiry into involuntary journeys and cyclical and backward motion. This beautifully produced artist's book derives its design from the 1940s series Britain in Pictures and contains photographs, drawings and essays on the project alongside a letter by Erasmus.
PUBLISHER Christine Burgin/Donald Young
BOOK FORMAT Clth, 6.5 x 9 in. / 48 pgs / 16 bw / 2 color.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 2/28/2011 Active
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: SPRING 2011 p. 87
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9780692002186TRADE List Price: $30.00 CAD $40.00 GBP £27.00
AVAILABILITY Out of stock
STATUS: Out of stock
Temporarily out of stock pending additional inventory.
Published by Hatje Cantz. Text by Grant Arnold, Tacita Dean, Julian Heynen, Sabrina van der Ley.
A stalwart of Vancouver's Conceptual scene, artist and musician Rodney Graham has used an array of media to explore appropriated historical sources from literature, philosophy and pop music, and to induce shifts in the viewer's preconceptions and perceptions of these sources: Sigmund Freud, Donald Judd, Edgar Allan Poe and even Graham's former bandmate Jeff Wall have provided subject matter for the artist's critical tweakings. Through the Forest collects over 100 works, dating from 1978 to the present, that emphasize Graham's interpolations in cultural history—in the forms of appendices, bookmarks and exhibition devices in the style of Donald Judd. This monograph also premiers Graham's first incursion into painting, his 2005 series Picasso, My Master, which inflects the reverence commonly attending Picasso's work with his signature humor. Through the Forest makes a thorough assessment of Graham's influential and seductive body of work.
Published by DuMont. Essay by Dorothea Zwirner. Foreword by Friedrich Christian Flick.
Volume 1 in the Collector's Choice Artists' Monographs from the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection features the work of Canadian artist Rodney Graham as he strolls, via his works, through Modernism. On Graham's meandering itinerary through photography, literature, music, art, film, psychology, and linguistics, we encounter Richard Wagner, St»phane Mallarm», Edgar Allen Poe, Sigmund Freud, and Donald Judd, not to mention the prevalence of cinema and popular music. The contradictions in his work--gravity and play, reverential homage and scenarized self-presentation--show Graham to be a contemporary melancholic. This is the most comprehensive and insightful monograph of the artist's work to date.
Vancouver Conceptualist Rodney Graham defies categorization by employing multiple styles and working in diverse media including photography, film, performance, music and text. One of the most gratifying artist's books ever to grace D.A.P.'s list, Wet on Wet: My Late Early Styles presents a new body of work reflecting on the practice of painting. For Wet on Wet Graham adopts the eccentric persona of the "gifted amateur," a recurrent figure in his recent work. He presents 22 oils and one acrylic work in a variety of styles, placing painting in the context of a post-medium practice. Graham credits music with informing much of his work. A musician himself, he views his role as an artist as an extension of the idea of performance. His work examines social and philosophical systems of thought, in particular those derived from the transition of the Enlightenment into Modernism.
Published by The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Essays by Cornelia Butler, Grant Arnold, Jessica Bradley, Lynne Cooke, Diedrich Diedrichsen, Sara Krajewski and Shepherd Steiner.
One of Canada's most humorous conceptual artists--as witty as he is smart--Rodney Graham gets his first North American museum retrospective and accompanying catalogue. Rodney Graham: A Little Thought tracks the career of a brilliant, idiosyncratic artist whose work spans a range of media including photography, film, book works, installation and pop music. In this volume, amply illustrated with many never-before-seen images from early in his career as well as new photography of his most recent works, scholarly essays provide a broad context for viewing: Cornelia Butler looks at Graham's relationship to landscape and Canadian identity, Lynne Cooke examines the construction of the artist's persona in works such as City Self/ Country Self (2001), and Shep Steiner discusses the joke as a conceptual strategy for Graham. Diedrich Diederichsen considers the artist's oeuvre within the context of musical structure, and Sara Krajewski describes how Graham's video works unfold. Finally, Grant Arnold offers an in-depth illustrated chronology, tracing the range of activities that have occupied Graham since his early days on the Vancouver scene.
PUBLISHER The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
BOOK FORMAT Hardcover, 9.75 x 11.75 in. / 208 pgs / 150 color / 50 bw / 20 duotone.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 5/2/2004 Out of print
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: SPRING 2004
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9780914357889TRADE List Price: $39.99 CAD $50.00
Rodney Graham
Rodney Graham: British Weathervanes
Rodney Graham: Through the Forest
Rodney Graham: Collector's Choice Vol. 1
Rodney Graham: Wet on Wet
Rodney Graham: A Little Thought