Bekannte - Unbekannte
Berlin: Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, 1980. First edition. Oblong 4to, [108] pp, tapebound into photographically illustrated wraps. Illustrated with b/w photographs. Text in German. With texts by Janos Frecot, Julie Schauer, Walter Aue, and Ulrich Bischoff.
Artist's book published in conjunction with the 1980 exhibition at NBK, which documents the bricks which the artist from the ruins of buildings in Berlin and installed in the gallery. The initial images are of the archeological sites themselves, but soon give way to a sustained passage of full bleed b/w photographs, one brick per page. The eroded shapes of the bricks, as well as the symbols, marks, and maker's marks on the bricks, their original significance now lost in time, become an opaque index to the destruction of the buildings, a projection of a sort of ghostly afterlife of 20th century labor.
At the close of the exhibition, the bricks were returned to their original sites.
One of the great and criminally overlooked artists' books dealing with architecture, and a great city book.
Very good with some rubbing and fading to wraps, some fading to spine, and a slight bump to upper tip. Item #24518
Price: $75.00