![(sign) [show] {trade} Thomas Macker
88 pages, 12 page essay, 39 images SIZE: 7 x 10” Book Cloth Cover w/ gold foil stamp 70# uncoated white and 100# Satin white
ISBN 978-0-615-76630-0 Text by Arjuna Neuma Designed by Women Typeset in LLBrown and MSPGothic
First Edition, 500 copies Copyright © 2013 in the pines books Printed in the United States of America
Published in conjunction with an exhibition at Gallery KM
Book launch details - https://www.facebook.com/events/435441186532617/?ref=3
Publisher’s/Exhibition Description:
Gallery km presents Thomas Macker’s (sign) [show] {trade}, an exhibition utilizing photography and sculptural objects to explore the intersection between natural ecosystems and built communities, and the way in which the impulse towards constant modification –and its resulting toxicities—obfuscates our ability to connect, while magnifying our desire for that connection. The exhibition will take place from February 9th through March 16th, with a reception for the artist on Saturday, February 9th, from 6-8pm, and precedes the publication of an artist book by Macker featuring the same series of works. This is Macker’s first solo show with gallery km.
Conceptually, the exhibition is structured horizontally, with two formally similar series of photographic works bridged by photographs and sculptural objects that offer a dialogic counterpoint to the main series. The first group of photographs focuses around seed signs and sacks advertising distinct crop strains of genetically modified corn and soy. The individual sacks and signs are set up at the center of still life compositions, staged in the basement of Macker’s home in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The sacks hang from the fiberglass insulation and wooden boards of the basement ceiling, while the signs are placed in gravel on the floor. The backdrops, often constructed by hanging used textiles against the gold-painted walls of the basement, offer glimpses of American nostalgia—old quilts featuring Winnie The Pooh, The Transformers, and Disney Princesses, along with faded floral sheets, tie-dye hangings, penguins. The series is presented as a calendar of images; each photograph is named for a month of the year, with an additional one for each season. The repetition in the photographs acts as a meditation on the ways we mark time, while the content of the images posits company branding as a primary signifier of cultural and personal identity: nostalgia and desire for meaning coopted by companies that alter the foundation of our sustenance.
In Macker’s work, the ‘seed’—as altered commodity—locates the collision between the idea of the natural world as something outside and other than human, and the natural world as what we are (as animals who eat food grown from seeds, eat animals who have eaten plants grown from seeds, breathe air full of oxygen created by photosynthesis, and on and on). This space of collision and contradiction is where Macker argues we reside, and the photographic and sculptural pieces that bridge the two still life series in the exhibition offer a glimpse of the effects of that lived contradiction.Dog God | Man Camp | Big Piney, WY shows a coyote impaled by a pole and posed with its head up (as if howling), a scene Macker found and documented next to one of the “Man Camps” of trailers that have sprung up throughout the Gaslands of Wyoming, the Dakotas, Colorado and Iowa to house temporary gas line workers. Another shows the snow-filled landscape where Matthew Shephard was beaten and killed, the only marker of that moment of cultural mourning and instigator of progressive action now a gas company pole. Bumper stickers Macker stole from trucks in Wyoming and printed onto vintage glass tiles depict bikini-clad women alongside text that reads “Just Frack It”, and, a digitally rendered bust of a disembodied pregnant torso hangs next to a digitally rendered image of a Molatov cocktail. Reproduction, destruction, re-birth, identity, and verbal and physical languages of dominance comingle with cultural hope and yearning—a yearning that always seems to leave violence in its wake.
In the second still life series, the seed signs have been replaced by gas company signage. These signs, stolen by Macker during drives across the Gaslands, functioned as markers for the temporary roadways that crisscross the landscape where gas lines are in construction. In this series, the signs rest on top of a wooden crate instead of being placed in gravel, and the backdrop is now constructed of brown carpet. In front of the carpet, Macker has hung reproductions of 19th and 20th century artwork mythologizing woodcutters. Behind a Unit Drilling Company sign directing us towards Rig 24, we see Winslow Homer’s The Woodcutter, here featured on a living room wall as part of an interior design advertisement. In Der Holzfäller, Ferdinand Hodler, 1910, a Danger Benzene Cancer Hazard sign accompanied by a potted plant stands in front of Ferdinand Hodler’s Der Holzfäller. Co-opting these already-reproduced artworks, Macker highlights the historic glorification of human dominance over nature, as well as the problematic placement of the artist within this glorification, as a symbol and actor of these same problematic humanist ideals. The scenes are constructed to be visually satisfying, uncomfortable, humorous, claustrophobic, and unexpectedly personal, reflecting our continued desire to feel communal pride in our accomplishments, as well as the consequences of a system in which the structure for expansion we have created necessitates an unwillingness to recognize the fallibility or responsibility of power.
Thomas Macker received his MFA from CalArts in Photography and Media in 2011. Currently, Thomas lives in Jackson, WY, where he works as the photography department head for the arts and education nonprofit, the Art Association of Jackson Hole, where he is also a curator for the organization’s galleries. Macker also teaches photography at Central Wyoming College, and has just opened an artist-run alternative gallery space, ITP Space. As an artist/curator he has exhibited his work in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Miami and New York.
(via http://inthepinesbooks.com/books.html & http://www.gallerykmla.com/exhibitions/thomas-macker-sign-show-trade.html )](http://25.media.tumblr.com/a133957984d41453d7483d4038a0f2d3/tumblr_mjpxzvFrbQ1qzkvewo1_250.jpg)
(sign) [show] {trade}
Thomas Macker
88 pages, 12 page essay, 39 images
SIZE: 7 x 10”
Book Cloth Cover w/ gold foil stamp
70# uncoated white and 100# Satin white
ISBN 978-0-615-76630-0
Text by Arjuna Neuma
Designed by Women
Typeset in LLBrown and MSPGothic
First Edition, 500 copies
Copyright © 2013 in the pines books
Printed in the United States of America
Published in conjunction with an exhibition at Gallery KM
Book launch details - https://www.facebook.com/events/435441186532617/?ref=3
Publisher’s/Exhibition Description:
Gallery km presents Thomas Macker’s (sign) [show] {trade}, an exhibition utilizing photography and sculptural objects to explore the intersection between natural ecosystems and built communities, and the way in which the impulse towards constant modification –and its resulting toxicities—obfuscates our ability to connect, while magnifying our desire for that connection. The exhibition will take place from February 9th through March 16th, with a reception for the artist on Saturday, February 9th, from 6-8pm, and precedes the publication of an artist book by Macker featuring the same series of works. This is Macker’s first solo show with gallery km.
Conceptually, the exhibition is structured horizontally, with two formally similar series of photographic works bridged by photographs and sculptural objects that offer a dialogic counterpoint to the main series. The first group of photographs focuses around seed signs and sacks advertising distinct crop strains of genetically modified corn and soy. The individual sacks and signs are set up at the center of still life compositions, staged in the basement of Macker’s home in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The sacks hang from the fiberglass insulation and wooden boards of the basement ceiling, while the signs are placed in gravel on the floor. The backdrops, often constructed by hanging used textiles against the gold-painted walls of the basement, offer glimpses of American nostalgia—old quilts featuring Winnie The Pooh, The Transformers, and Disney Princesses, along with faded floral sheets, tie-dye hangings, penguins. The series is presented as a calendar of images; each photograph is named for a month of the year, with an additional one for each season. The repetition in the photographs acts as a meditation on the ways we mark time, while the content of the images posits company branding as a primary signifier of cultural and personal identity: nostalgia and desire for meaning coopted by companies that alter the foundation of our sustenance.
In Macker’s work, the ‘seed’—as altered commodity—locates the collision between the idea of the natural world as something outside and other than human, and the natural world as what we are (as animals who eat food grown from seeds, eat animals who have eaten plants grown from seeds, breathe air full of oxygen created by photosynthesis, and on and on). This space of collision and contradiction is where Macker argues we reside, and the photographic and sculptural pieces that bridge the two still life series in the exhibition offer a glimpse of the effects of that lived contradiction.Dog God | Man Camp | Big Piney, WY shows a coyote impaled by a pole and posed with its head up (as if howling), a scene Macker found and documented next to one of the “Man Camps” of trailers that have sprung up throughout the Gaslands of Wyoming, the Dakotas, Colorado and Iowa to house temporary gas line workers. Another shows the snow-filled landscape where Matthew Shephard was beaten and killed, the only marker of that moment of cultural mourning and instigator of progressive action now a gas company pole. Bumper stickers Macker stole from trucks in Wyoming and printed onto vintage glass tiles depict bikini-clad women alongside text that reads “Just Frack It”, and, a digitally rendered bust of a disembodied pregnant torso hangs next to a digitally rendered image of a Molatov cocktail. Reproduction, destruction, re-birth, identity, and verbal and physical languages of dominance comingle with cultural hope and yearning—a yearning that always seems to leave violence in its wake.
In the second still life series, the seed signs have been replaced by gas company signage. These signs, stolen by Macker during drives across the Gaslands, functioned as markers for the temporary roadways that crisscross the landscape where gas lines are in construction. In this series, the signs rest on top of a wooden crate instead of being placed in gravel, and the backdrop is now constructed of brown carpet. In front of the carpet, Macker has hung reproductions of 19th and 20th century artwork mythologizing woodcutters. Behind a Unit Drilling Company sign directing us towards Rig 24, we see Winslow Homer’s The Woodcutter, here featured on a living room wall as part of an interior design advertisement. In Der Holzfäller, Ferdinand Hodler, 1910, a Danger Benzene Cancer Hazard sign accompanied by a potted plant stands in front of Ferdinand Hodler’s Der Holzfäller. Co-opting these already-reproduced artworks, Macker highlights the historic glorification of human dominance over nature, as well as the problematic placement of the artist within this glorification, as a symbol and actor of these same problematic humanist ideals. The scenes are constructed to be visually satisfying, uncomfortable, humorous, claustrophobic, and unexpectedly personal, reflecting our continued desire to feel communal pride in our accomplishments, as well as the consequences of a system in which the structure for expansion we have created necessitates an unwillingness to recognize the fallibility or responsibility of power.
Thomas Macker received his MFA from CalArts in Photography and Media in 2011. Currently, Thomas lives in Jackson, WY, where he works as the photography department head for the arts and education nonprofit, the Art Association of Jackson Hole, where he is also a curator for the organization’s galleries. Macker also teaches photography at Central Wyoming College, and has just opened an artist-run alternative gallery space, ITP Space. As an artist/curator he has exhibited his work in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Miami and New York.
(via http://inthepinesbooks.com/books.html & http://www.gallerykmla.com/exhibitions/thomas-macker-sign-show-trade.html )
• 15 March 2013
Tags |
Thomas Macker |
photobook |
artist book |
2013 |
gallery km |
in the pines books |
fette:
Exhaustion can occur merely attempting to breathe, 2013.
Each book is unique and assembled by hand.
Each book is composed of a portfolio of 34 pages of photographs,
two 8 pages booklets of writings,
ten small squares taped all throughout the book,
six loose written pages,
one page printed on both sides, one vellum insert,
and seven large folded photographs.
Each book is wrapped in a leather cover embossed with the title, and tied by two clasps.
Each purchase comes with a personal story, either recorded specifically, or made as a phone call.
Read more and purchase.
(via conscientious)
• 15 March 2013
Tags |
self published |
PhotoBook |
2013 |
artist book |
Lichen, Lichen
N. Dash
7.25 x 9.75 in., 36 pages,
clothbound hardcover, color offset
Edition of 500
ISBN 978-0-9847300-3-2
Publication date: February 2013
Hassala Books
Publisher’s Description:
Lichen, Lichen weaves together drawings and photographs made by the artist in the desert of the western United States. The photographs depict desert landscapes, images of lichen, as well as in one instance, the deadliest snake in North America. The drawings, which are watercolor and indigo pigment on lichen-dyed paper are shown surrounding the photographs. The work revolves around the land. Close up views of each drawing are shown on the following page.
(via Hassla) (via Printed Matter)
• 3 March 2013
Tags |
photobook |
artist book |
printed matter |
book launch |
2013 |
n. dash |
hassla |
Mark Wyse: Seizure
Damiani Press 2011
8.25 x 10.5 inches,
96 pages,
hardcover
Publisher’s Description:
This monograph by Mark Wyse is based upon a sequence of photographs (some by Wyse, some appropriated from other sources) juxtaposing disparate images as a means of exploring modes of photographic—and personal—meaning. Framing the book’s visual material, a dialogue of textual fragments introduces two voices that ruminate on the sense of seizure experienced while viewing a photograph.
Also see Hard Copy / Soft Image by Charlie White
(via Project Projects — Mark Wyse: Seizure)
• 27 December 2012
Tags |
Mark Wyse |
photobook |
artist book |
2011 |
Damiani Press |
essay |
2 Solitudes
by: Raymond Meeks
winter 2012
dumbsaint editions
“2 solitudes” w/gelatin silver print #1
Edition 1 of 40
re-appropriated cover 16x12 inches
Publisher’s Description:
“2 solitudes” presents a landscape of hardwood forests and rock walls as photographed from my car, suggesting the compression of space, time and memory. even as “inner voice” has summoned stillness and silence, a dominant impulse signals toward a search beyond for level ground and a place of belonging; a beauty which knows the horizon
from “a field guide to getting lost”, rebecca solnit writes:
“how will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you? suspended in the beautiful solitude of an open road,when the blue is deepest on the horizon a joy close to pain. every love has its landscape, as a place possesses you in its absence, takes on another life as sense of place, a faraway deep inside”.
“2 solitudes” is intended as an expression of deep gratitude to my dear friend jemma craig and her husband and son; patrick and rowan driscoll. I wished to make for them, a gathering of pictures which might be considered beautiful, generous and enduring; a quiet offering in return for their gracious and expansive giving. and, finally, to share it with you.
• 21 December 2012
Tags |
raymond meeks |
dumbsaint editions |
artist book |
photobook |
2012 |
Singular Beauty.
Photographs by Cara Phillips.
2012.
208 pp., color illustraitons throughout,
8½x10¼”.
Publisher’s Description:
Beauty stalks us with a condescending eye. From television screens to magazines, shop windows to billboards, there is hardly a face or figure that hasn’t been trimmed, polished, or reinvented to beleaguer us with an increasingly unattainable paradigm of physical beauty. Here Cara Phillips explores the reassuring environments and ominous implements of cosmetic surgery. The book provides a voyeuristic view into the pristine temples of physical transformation while simultaneously offering an insightful critique of our culture of narcissism.
(via CARA PHILLIPS)
• 24 November 2012
Tags |
photobook |
2012 |
cara phillips |
self published |
artist book |
Greg Stimac
Empire
Oakland, CA: Land and Sea. 2012
Category: Book
Pages: 280 p.
Cover: Softcover - Other
Binding: glue bound
Process: offset-printed
Color: color
Edition 50
Signed: Unsigned and Unnumbered
Publisher’s Description:
PROJECTS-
OLD FAITHFUL INVERSION AND EMPIRE.
FLIP THE BOOK ONE WAY YOU GET EMPIRE, THE OTHER, OLD FAITHFUL INVERSION.
INTRODUCTION ESSAY BY KARSTEN LUND/ASSISTANT CURATOR OF THE MCA CHICAGO.
REGULAR EDITION OF 50 AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE ON THE SIDE BAR.
ARTIST EDITION OF 5 COMES IN A RECLAIMED FILM REEL CANISTER WITH A SLIVER OF ORIGINAL FILM FROM OLD FAITHFUL INVERSION USED AS A WAY TO LIFT THE BOOK FROM ITS CASE. THE EDITION IS HAND STAMPED AND NUMBERED. NONE ARE IDENTICAL. CONTACT US FOR ARTIST EDITION.
(via PrintedMatter.org & Land and Sea )
• 16 November 2012
Tags |
land and sea |
photobook |
artist book |
greg stimac |
2012 |
printed matter |
eastertroublepress:
sneak peak at a new publication: Working Memory, 2012
will be released at Offprint Paris 2012 on November 15th
Publisher’s Description:
Working Memory
photobook, 35 x 23.5 cm, handmade special bound cover, includes four custom laser-cut folders with hand-tipped ink jet prints on the front, 56 pages of color photographs divided into four sections, plus a 35mm slide duplicate encased in a translucent, sealed envelope with text hand-typed onto the envelope, edition size 25
Working Memory is a portrait of Shirley Jorjorian, an artist and friend who was living with Dementia when we met. The project combines photographs with scans of papers and other items found in her apartment as well as reproduced pages from a standard test given to assess the various stages of Dementia. The project examines identity’s relationship to memory and the absurdity of attempting photographic preservation of reality. It is presented as an archive in book form, referencing Shirley’s own archive of hug lists she made after being diagnosed with Dementia.
(Source: eastertroublepress.com)
• 13 November 2012
Tags |
offprint |
photobook |
artist book |
2012 |
easter trouble press |
Real Live Germans
Jim Reed
Easter Trouble Press
- set of 41 playing cards with color photographs and text
- encased in hand made, hand stamped boxes
- edition size 100
- 6.6cm x 10cm
With a release video here:
https://vimeo.com/48296412
This project explores questions of identity, nationality, and insider/outsider politics. Limited edition copies are available, send order requests to:
eastertroublepress@gmail.com
Easter Trouble Press is also proud to announce that we will have a table at this year’s offprint Paris, from November 15th-18th, 2012.
• 1 September 2012
Tags |
Jim Reed |
Easter Trouble Press |
artist book |
Volume 1: A Fieldguide For The International Survivalist; Expanding The Network
by: Gerald Edwards III
2006
37 pages,
8.26” x 11.69”
perfect binding, black and white interior ink
Unlimited Edition
Publisher’s Description:
This Anthology presents picture of what it takes for the global citizen to thrive on the larger board of life. From harnessing free energy to self defense, The Fieldguide equips the reader with knowledge and techniques in order to take it to the next level in the years to come.
(via Books : Gerald Edwards III)
• 13 August 2012
Tags |
Team Big Tooth Press |
Gerald Edwards III |
artist book |
