Marina Abramovic | 100 letters 1965 - 1979

Marina Abramovic

100 letters 1965 - 1979

Paris, France: Onestar Press, 2008

197 pp., 29.7 × 21 cm., softcover

Edition of 1000

An Artist’s Book assembling of the first sentence of every letter the artist received between 1965 and 1979. These include correspondence between friends and family members with a wide variety of topics discussed, such as: food in the fridge, requests for wool, travel plans, birth announcements and artworks being framed. The text is in English and Serbian. 

"Since I was very young, until my early thirties, I had serious problems in opening and reading any letters I received. Letters would stay on my table for weeks before I found the courage to open them, and during this time my sense of guilt would grow and grow.

Most of the time, when I finally opened the letters, it was too late to answer them and my sense of guilt was worse than ever.

I kept every single letter, from the first notes received from my mother, in I965, up to the time I left Belgrade for ever in I979. I decided to chronologically write down the first sentence from all of these letters, without noting the name of the senders. When finished, I was astonished to see how it was possible to trace all my life just by reading the text created by all these first lines.

Later I heard that Marcel Duchamp, on receiving a letter, opened, answered, and immediately burnt the letter he’d received.

Jean Tinguely never opened or answered any letter, and every Christmas he made a ritual of burning unopened envelopes, which sometimes included important information and even checks.”

- Marina Abramovic

Jonas Mekas | Artist’s Book

Jonas Mekas

Artist’s Book

New York Ciyy, USA: Onestar Press, 2003

144 pp., 22.5 x 14 cm, softcover

Edition of 1000

This 2003 title functions as a kind of scrapbook, filled with postcards, notes, drawings, and letters that the artist received over the years from friends such as Patti Smith, Allen Ginsberg, Paul Sharits, Michelangelo Antonioni, Joan Crawford, and others. 

Artist’s Book is published in an edition of 1000, with 200 copies signed, dated and numbered by Mekas. 

Jonathan Monk | Untitled (Touch Wood)

Jonathan Monk
Untitled (Touch Wood) 
Paris, France: One Star Press, 2016
15.8 x 7.8 x .07 cm.
Edition of 3 monogrammed and numbered copies [+2 AP]

Available in Birch, Oak and Olive wood, accompanied by a signed and numbered certificate.

"Jonathan Monk’s Untitled (Touch Wood) is modelled after the iPhone 6s, and is available in four different types of wood: Birch, Oak, Olive Wood and Macassar Ebony. As the old superstition goes, sometimes we need to touch these wooden objects for good luck even if it goes against any human reason or rationale: the perfect antithesis to the iPhone 6s."

 -press release. 

Available from the publisher, here, for 500 €.

Monk celebrates his 51st birthday today.

Claire Fontaine | Some Instructions For the Sharing of Private Property

Claire Fontaine
Some Instructions For the Sharing of Private Property
Paris, France: Onestar Press, 2011
150 pp., 14 x 22.5 cm., paperback
Edition of 250

"This book is a tale of seduction. It reveals how to win the resistance of closed doors that we all face each day. We can read that a lock is not a hostile obstacle to our desire but a new potential lover, whose interiority we have to see with the eyes of the soul and whose qualities and defaults we have to imagine. A world of silent dialogues between unanimated beings and humans discloses itself in these pages. Chapter after chapter, a disquieting light is shed on the triad of the artist, the consumer and the lock-picker, all belonging to the same confraternity of bilingual creatures, fearless explorers of the deserts of reification, able to communicate with and through objects. Smelling, touching, listening are to be learnt again by the ones who might want to succeed in lock-picking, and if they do – they are warned - they shouldn’t think “I made it” but wonder “what exactly happened ?”. Because the point isn’t why resistance leaves the place to openness, but how that happens. There is a science of quality that defies logic, it rules the domain of the love conquest whose champion is Don Giovanni, restless wrecker of moral boundaries and petty bourgeois common sense, moved by the mere pleasure of adding another name to his list. There is a use value that ruins all exchange value. And there is an accumulation of competence that threatens all other possible accumulation.If this manual contains information, it must be said that it can only be used in the way one would follow directions for spiritual exercises. Never think about yourself and never think about the lock : ego gets in the way of lock-picking as much as it does for any Zen practice. Visualizing the invisible, evaluating the con-sequences of the least of our gestures, reaching a state of concentrated relaxation are parts of the process, whose unspoken aim is becoming something between flesh and metal - like Odradek is both a bobbin and a begging creature, but he is neither of them.Some instructions for the sharing of private property is a story of asceticism told by various anonymous voices. Because the morality of the lock-picker resembles the one of the fidèles d’amour : there are many easy ways to break into places, but picking a lock is the more virtuous one. Cultivating this virtuosity involves sensing the world more intensely, sanding one’s fingertips until each grain of sand paper can be distinctly felt, making oneself as rigid and cold as a key until perfectly understanding what every clicking noise means, being aware of the infinite states that exist between closed and open, all to be inhabited and influenced. Lock-pickers belong to a clandestine congregation, which has the means to enter our houses and our hearts, but here a choice is presented to us : becoming one of them or taking closed doors for an answer."

- Claire Fontaine, March 2011

Available from the publisher, here, for 60 €, and from Printed Matter, here, for $55.00 US.

Claire Fontaine (the Paris-based collective who borrow their name from a brand of school notebooks) give a free lecture on the subject of Italian feminists of the 1970s today at OCADU at 6:30pm, room 190. 

The event is organized as part of the Getting Rid Of Ourselves exhibition, curated by Helena Reckitt and featuring works by Becky Beasley, Adrian Blackwell, Heath Bunting, Kajsa Dahlberg, Jesse Darling, Janez Jansa and collaborations by Kernel, Goldin+Senneby and Claire Fontaine. The works in the exhibition "question the link between art and self-expression through tactics of anonymity, shared authorship, appropriated identities, delegated production, and financial speculation." 

The opening of the exhibition follows the talk, from 8pm to 10pm tonight, at Onsite [at] OCAD University (230 Richmond St. West). Several of the artists will be present. The show runs until October 11th. 

For more information, visit the Facebook page, here. 

2014 London Art Book Fair

From Artlyst, here:


"The London Art Book Fair celebrates the best of international contemporary art publishing. Exhibitors include galleries, booksellers, colleges and leading publishers such as Hatje Cantz, Onestar Press, Ridinghouse and Thames and Hudson. Rare and unusual books and prints from independent publishers, artists and presses include Nobrow’s books and art comics introducing the work of talented illustrators from around the world, and super/collider, whose mesmerising publications and prints investigate the crossover between science and pop culture. A wide range of artists’ books from AMBruno, Onomatopee and many others will be on sale.

A packed events programme runs throughout the Fair, including talks, screenings, book signings and performances with leading artists and writers.

This year features Canada as a focus country in partnership with the Canada Council for the Arts, bringing a selection of the country’spresses, distributors, independent publishers and editions-makers to the UK for the first time.

Iwona Blazwick, OBE, Director of the Whitechapel Gallery said: “2014 will be our largest and most ambitious Fair. In addition to our usual festival of events and a huge number of exhibitors, for the first time ever the Whitechapel Gallery will shine a spotlight on one of the many thriving art book scenes outside of London, and we are delighted to present a hand-picked selection of today’s most exciting creative publishers from Canada.”

Exhibitors for The London Art Book Fair 2014:  ABC Art Books Canada, Akerman Daly, A. K. Lee / Ignition, Ambeck Design, AMBruno, Anagram Books, AND Publishing,  Andrew Malone, Art Books Publishing Ltd., Ben Uri Gallery & Museum, Black Dog Publishing UK, Book Machine / Publication Studio Vancouver, BookRoom, Book Works, Bywater Bros. Editions, Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver), Central Books, Charles H Scott / Emily Carr University Press, Container, Conundrum Press, Copy Press, Cornerhouse, Crudo, David Faithfull, Daniel Blau gallery, Dario Zeruto, David Zwirner, Ditto Press, Edinburgh College of Art Second Century Press, Ensixteen Editions, Edition Patrick Frey, Film and Video Umbrella, Fitzcarraldo Editions /The White Review,  Four Corners Books, Fox Ash Press, From Me To You Publications, Gagosian Gallery, Gevaert Editions, Gimpel Fils, Glasgow Women's Library, GOST Books, Go Together Press, Halifax INK / Saint Mary's University Art Gallery, Hato Press, Hatje Cantz Verlag, Hayward Publishing, Jacqueline Thomas Books and Tufnell Art Press, Jane & Jeremy, Jane Hyslop, John Hansard Gallery, Kaho Kojima, KALEID editions, Koenig Books, Kunthalle Wien, La Silueta Ediciones, Laurence King Publishing, LemonMelon, Live Art Development Agency London Group, Luminous Books, MA Art Design and the Book Colchester School of Art, Marcus Campbell Art Books, Mark Pawson, The MIT Press, Nobrow/Flying Eye Books, Max Malandrino Books, Nothing Else Press, One Star Press, Onomatopee, Otto Graphic, Paper Tigers Books, PJB Editions, Regroupement des centres d'artistes autogérés du Québec, Red Sphinx, Ridinghouse, Rhein-Verlag, Rose Issa Projects, Sonnenzimmer, South London Gallery, Spazio Libro d'Artista, super/collider, Sylph Editions, Tara Books, Thames & Hudson, Themerson Estate, The Object, Trolley Books, Uniformbooks, University of Chicago Press, Valiz, Welling School and Whitechapel Gallery."

NYC Art Book Fair: One Star Press

One Star press is presenting Gabriel Kuri's Soft Wave Bookshelf displayed with a special selection of new titles.

Hans Schabus | [Visite] 1999

Hans Schabus
[Visite] 1999
Paris, France: Onestar Press,  2000
156 pp., 14 x 22.5 cm., paperback
Edition of 250

Portraits of a year's worth of visitors to the artist's studio. The camera is in a fixed position, recording the subject's heights in relation to each other.