Yael Bartana

Joanna Mytkowska

Published on the occasion of presentations of "And Europe Will Be Stunned" in Europe in 2011/12. Includes essays by Jacqueline Rose, Boris Groys, Joanna Mytkowska, Adi Ophir and Ariella Azoulay.

And Europe Will be Stunned

Éric de Chassey

Edi Hila

Erzen Shkololli

Kathrin Rhomberg

This catalog accompanies Edi Hila: Painter of Transformation, the first retrospective exhibition devoted to the Albanian painter Edi Hila, considered one of the last masters from Eastern Europe. Through Hila's eyes, the Eastern European experience is stripped of accident or adventure and instead gives weight to distilled general truths. The catalog traces key moments from his formative artistic experience, including a firsthand account of his infamous 1972 painting, Planting of Trees, which because of its unusual use of color and form that ran contrary to approved socialist realist doctrine, led to his being forced to labor in a poultry processing plant. In the evenings, however, he secretly created a series of drawings documenting the life of the workers, which became the Poultry series, harrowing in its raw realism. The publication continues to track Hila's practice through the 1990s, when we find the artist carefully observing life after the fall of Enver Hoxha's regime and his attempts at depicting the realities of the Albanian transformation on the precipice of the new millennium, before concluding with a review of Hila's contemporaneous practice, which discloses more the limitations and traps of transformation than its promises. Richly illustrated with reproductions of Hila's work in full color, many of them never before published, this is a groundbreaking catalog, one that will help establish Hila's international reputation as a master painter of the region and Europe at large.

Elena Filipovic

Alina Szapocznikow

A sculptor who began working during the postwar period in a classical figurative style, Alina Szapocznikow radically reconceptualized sculpture as an imprint not only of memory but of her own body. Though her career effectively spanned less than two decades (cut short by the artists premature death in 1973 aged 47), Szapocznikow left behind a legacy of provocative objects that evoke Surrealism, Nouveau Réalisme and Pop art. Her tinted polyester casts of body parts, often transformed into everyday objects like lamps or ashtrays; her poured polyurethane forms; and her elaborately constructed sculptures, which at times incorporated photographs, clothing or car parts, all remain as wonderfully idiosyncratic and culturally resonant today as when they were first made. Well-known in Poland, where her work has been highly influential since early in her career, Szapocznikows compelling body of work is ripe for art-historical reexamination. Alina Szapocznikow: Sculpture Undone, 19551972 offers a comprehensive overview of this important artists work at a moment when international interest is blossoming. Richly illustrated with over 150 colour plates, the catalogue features essays by the exhibition curators that touch on key aspects of her practice and historical reception, as well as an extensive annotated chronology that provides an in-depth exploration of the intersection of her life and art. Spanning one of the most rich and complex periods of the twentieth century, Szapocznikows oeuvre responds to many of the ideological and artistic developments of her time through artwork that is at once fragmented and transformative, sensual and reflective, playfully realized and politically charged.

Joanna Mytkowska

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