For Juxta‘s first series of artists’ books, we invite artists to consider the afterlife in its multifarious imaginings, such as extinction and nothingness, dislocation and resurrection. Throughout the millennia, every civilization and culture has developed a system of beliefs and rituals to address this universal conundrum.
The afterlife is an idea that evokes many questions but provides no assured answers. Is there anything ensuing the extinction of the body? Can human beings reconstitute themselves after death? Each artist explores such uncertainties, preserving their original viewpoint within a book.
mandarin contains a series of images shot by Burgin using a virtual camera inside a rendered videogame environment built by Mountain View Studios. A tropical landscape governed by dream-logic responds to the fragmented memories of organic life recalled by its digital inhabitant; paths appear from nowhere leading the speaker on journeys that always seem to take them back to the same place. Contemplating paradisal stasis, mandarin explores how we might reconstruct embodied memories in an immaterial and virtual world.
Limited edition of 80, signed and numbered by the artist
Offset print on Gardamatt Ultra, 20.7 x 20.7 x 1.7 cm
2019
978-88-943264-2-0
This softcover book reproduces pencil drawings from Anselmo’s 1978 exhibition ‘Un particolare a sud, Trecento milioni di anni ad ovest nord-ovest, quattordici disegni intorno‘ at Sperone Westwater Fischer, New York. Each copy features a unique titular frottage by the artist. The drawings show a compass in sixteen different positions. As the needle rotates, the number of directions multiply. Anselmo’s afterlife hints to an immanent infinity that threatens to collapse our sense of measurement, space and orientation before the intimation of a void.
Limited edition of 50, signed and numbered by the artist
Offset print on Fedrigoni Century Cotton Wove 120 gsm, Fedrigoni Materica Gesso 250 gsm cover, 20 x 20 cm
2016
978‒88‒941560‒0‒3
This 64-page, softcover book is an intermedial mix of image and text. A black hole steadily expands on each page while, on the verso, Steinbach repeats a single line of text 33 times. Negation after negation, the black hole gradually engulfs the page. This occupation of space paradoxically voids it while obscuring the concept of the infinite itself.
Limited edition of 200, signed and numbered by the artist
Offset print, 11.5 x 15.9 cm
2018
978-88-943264-0-6
Each book contains a single fragile card which the artist has painted with layers of impasto on both sides. The card combines the flatness of painting and the three-dimensionality of sculpture. It is in the artist’s signature spectrum of colour, in shades of blue and pink, and operates almost as a relic. The whole object is bound in a hardcover book and held in a case. Arguably, for Spalletti, the afterlife pertains to the perennial presence of colour.
5 unique books, signed and numbered by the artist
Titled in gold leaf, 13 x 17.8 cm
2016
978-88-941560-2-7
Ilya and Emilia Kabakov have produced five drawings for Afterlife. Each fabric portfolio-book consists of one original and a booklet containing four offset reproductions of the remaining drawings. This edition speculates on a blank beyond reach by depicting various figures in transit, from one edge to the other, from birth to death.
5 unique books, signed and numbered by the artists
Offset lithography on Mohawk Superfine 270 gsm, Tela Paradise Nera cover with silkscreen print title, acid-free envelope, 37.2 x 47 cm
2017
978-88-943264-1-3
This edition consists of two books and a vinyl disk. The first book contains emails about the vinyl’s arduous path to fruition and the second serves as an appendix – an accumulation of the emails’ attachments (diagrams, renderings, sound file references) and images of vinyl cutting tests, alongside archival material from the artist’s studio.
Limited edition of 12, signed and numbered by the artist
Digital and silk screen print on Curious Collection paper, Perspex box with graphite memory foam insert, 33.4 x 33.4 x 8.2 cm
October 2019
978-88-943264-5-1
Mariko Mori has been contemplating the theme of the afterlife for years. The collection of 46 drawings presented in this edition were created in Okinawa, Japan, over a period of fourteen years. The edition size has numerical significance for the artist, inspired by the 33 transformations undergone by Bodhisattvas to attain salvation. 13 special copies of The Soul Never Dies contain an original artwork by Mariko Mori.
Limited edition of 333, signed and numbered by the artist. 13 books will feature an original intervention by the artist
23 x 31.5 x 4 cm
October 2019
978-88-94326437
This book combines two kinds of imagery. It pairs together Beam of Light, Kiki Smith’s drawings from the Vision Hour collages, with Seton Smith’s photographs of Hangzhou and the Pedder Building in Hong Kong. Page after page, one is confronted by alternating moods, either shifting towards the marvel of nature or sliding into cloistered spaces. It suggests ancient dichotomies, like heaven and hell, body and soul, decomposition and growth.
Limited edition of 50, signed and numbered by the artists
34.2 x 22.8 cm
2018
978-88-943264-8-2
Nine contemporary artists contribute to this series of prints devoted to the idea of Justice. Plato saw justice as the ultimate virtue of both individuals and societies. Still, after the thousands of years our species has been on the planet, we remain uncertain about whether justice comes to us naturally or must be acquired through ongoing introspection and communal experiences.
Each print here operates as a kind of manifesto, a word that in Italian means both a poster and a statement announcing a new world view. Instead of words alone, however, now the statement comprises visual as well as mental values.
Two figures wrestle on the ground and, because neither dominates or submits, remain locked in an embrace.
100
Offset print on Mohawk Superfine 150 gsm, silkscreen text in white, 58 x 43 cm
2019
Durham depicts justice side-lined by other mental states that hinder and threaten to erase its likelihood of becoming visible.
Edition of 50, signed and numbered by the artist
Offset print on Mohawk Superfine 175 gsm, 70 x 93.8 cm
2018
A plant’s hidden branches represent the Dutch concept of De Afweging, a word which means both to weigh and to consider.
Edition of 50, signed and numbered by the artist
Offset print on Mohawk Superfine 150 gsm, 30 x 41.6 cm
2019
The root formation of a tree overpowers a concrete sidewalk. The thriving organic network evokes nature’s resilience against injustice.
Edition of 50, signed and numbered by the artist
Offset print on Gardamatt Ultra 125 gsm, 58 x 40.2 cm
2018
The self-administered justice to which the artists refer is an Adlerian psychoanalytical technique of, figuratively, spitting in the client’s soup; a method which squashes a patient’s delusion by exposing its underlying motivations.
Edition of 100, signed and numbered by the artists
Offset print on Mohawk Superfine 175 gsm, 40.2 x 28.6 cm
2018
The artist has divided a €500 note into 50 equal parts, implying that currency is worthless if it cannot be distributed. However, as one kind of value is nullified, the artist creates another.
Edition of 50, signed and numbered by the artist
Offset print on Mohawk Superfine Smooth 150 gsm, 50 x 70 cm
2018
The image indicates, by referencing the movement’s strident black and red flag, that justice can only be envisioned from an anarchic standpoint.
Edition of 100, signed and numbered by the artist
Offset print on Mohawk Superfine, double-hit, subsequent UV varnish on the black, 66 x 66 cm
2018