RVB Books
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Tabitha Soren – Surface Tension
BooksThe photographs that make up Tabitha Soren's book, Surface Tension are 20x25 room reproductions of her digital tablet screen. In the background, behind the fingerprints that cover the latter is a corpus of images from both her internet search history, the social networks she consults and the text messages she receives. Pictures of forest fires, protests, police repression, pictures that constitute the news and that we consult daily and often in a mechanical way. His artistic gesture highlights the constant interaction we have with our phone and evokes the collective reality of millions of humans constantly attracted by their screens and who, by dint of receiving an incessant flow of information in constant renewal, gradually forget that they also participate in the world physically and collectively. Surface Tension will be exhibited at Mills College Art Museum (September 2021 - December 2021), Pier 24 Photography (January 2022 - September 2022), and San Francisco Airport (October 2021 - April 2022). Soren has been a multidisciplinary visual artist for over 25 years, long interested in the intersection of culture, politics, the body, and psychology. She lives and works in California, and her work has been included in numerous private collections around the world (including museum collections such as LAC MA, The Getty, Harvard Art Museum, New Orleans Museum of Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, Eastman Museum of Photography, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Pier 24). The book is accompanied by an essay written by Jia Tolentino, a writer for The New Yorker and author of the collection of essays entitled "Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion."29,00€ -
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Philippe Jarrigeon – Play
BooksWhether still life, portraits, landscapes, architecture or fashion photographs, Philippe Jarrigeon revisits his archives and composes, for his first book with the obvious title "PLAY", an original sequence that covers more than 10 years of photographic practice. Adept at side stepping he has fashioned a singular and colorful universe, in which it is a question of the aesthetics of the TV sets of the 90s, English cinema, fun and fantasies. His personal vision of pop culture in short. Under the artistic direction of the Beda Achermann studio, the design of the book refers to the magazines from which these images come. The sequence is constructed according to a rainbow of colors and creates what the artist calls "a novel nuancier".38,00€ -
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Mazaccio & Drowilal – Paparazzi
BooksIn their series of images "Paparazzi", the artist duo Mazaccio and Drowilal use and misappropriate images from these image-hunting photographers, and establish a typology of celebrity behavior. "The Beach", "Bike Riding", "Surfing", their titles are more than explicit. If these representations tend to show that they lead a "normal" life (they shop at the supermarket, walk their dog), they nevertheless display the codes that mark their belonging to a class apart (sumptuous villas, heavenly beaches, etc.). Their activities come to be sponsored by brands that see this as a relevant product placement in view of the affects involved. By decontextualizing these models and by working on their accumulation, the artists neutralize the sensational charge inherent in their representation and expose the ideology and the model of society which hide behind this epiphenomenon. Defying the good taste, refuting any hierarchy between the noble image and the vernacular cliché, they operate detour, confrontations, juxtapositions, and by doing so, they deconstruct, the air of nothing, the representations which shape our contemporary imaginary.25,00€ -
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Antonio M. Xoubanova – Graffiti
BooksThe book Graffiti, although it refers to the urban art movement that appeared in the 1970s in New York, explores above all our relationship to the city. It is the act of marking the city with one's name, of repeating one's tag on a territory, of affirming one's existence that interests Antonio Xoubanova. The latter dissects this means of re-articulating the urban landscape, of gaining attention to the competition of advertising and signage. He insists on the multiplication and the redundancy of an essential self-affirmation, in a falsely chaotic sequence and a book form that, echoing graffiti, frees itself from the rules (no cover, apparent binding, destructured layout). The result is an object that can be described as baroque. The result of four years of shooting and a long collaboration with graphic designer David Mozzeta. Antonio Xoubanova is a member of Blank Paper, a collective of photographers who established themselves in Madrid in the early 2000s to develop and promote their work and create a common intellectual space. Since then, their photography has continued to evolve through a practice whose main characteristics are collaboration and exchange. Far from the official artistic circles and institutions, these photographers have managed to weave an independent network of production, exhibition and dissemination based on solidarity.38,00€ -
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Philippe Durand – Chauvet, l’aventure intérieure
BooksDiscovered in France in 1994 in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, the Chauvet cave is one of the major sites in the History of Humanity, as much for the technical and aesthetic qualities of its cave paintings as for the paleontological pieces present there. It is one of the oldest decorated caves in the world. Forbidden to the general public, it has always been an object of fascination for Man, marking a major turning point in cave art and the history of early man. Diving into the heart of this unique Paleolithic site involved a major artistic challenge for Philippe Durand. To understand the cave is to start from a closed universe, a quantifiable set of signs and a spectacular natural architecture, where time seems to have stopped. Philippe Durand has voluntarily moved away from objective representations to reveal a more intimate, more subjective cave. For this, he uses the technique of multiple exposures to which he associates color filters. Thus he defined a space of creation, of non-objective representation, in which each one can project himself differently. The color is no longer treated in its realistic dimension, it refers rather to an information, to a code, as in astronomical or microscopic photographs. He rediscovers the initial idea of a dreamed, fantasized cave, and takes us on a psychedelic exploration of the most famous site in prehistory. Philippe Durand is the winner of the 2nd edition of the photography contest initiated by the Association pour le Rayonnement de la Grotte Chauvet - Pontd'Arc. The awarding of this prize allowed him to go to the heart of the cave to carry out his photographic project, which led to the publication of the book "Chauvet, l'aventure intérieure" published by RVB Books.38,00€ -
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Thomas Mailaender – Name Dropping
BooksName Dropping is the 7th part of the series of notebooks that Thomas Mailaender devotes to amateur practices identified on the net. This time it is about posted images, on which appear the first and last names of the protagonists. Shortcuts, omissions and confrontations proliferate and give rise to a gallery of portraits as hilarious as they are entertaining.12,00€ -
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Stéphanie Solinas – Dominique Lambert
BooksDominique is the most common mixed name in France, and the twenty-seventh most common. Combining it with Lambert, the twenty-seventh most common surname, Stéphanie Solinas defined as her study population the one hundred and ninety-one Dominique Lambert listed in the private individuals' directory (Pages Blanches, France). She asked each of them by mail to fill out a Chinese portrait. From this, for the Dominique Lambert who responded, she elaborated a written portrait, with the help of the Advisory Committee for the Description of the Dominique Lambert (composed of a psychologist, a statistician, a police inspector, and a lawyer). This text formed the basis for the portrait drawn by the painter Benoît Bonnemaison-Fitte. The drawn portrait was then transformed into a sketch by Dominique Ledée, a police investigator from the Identité Judiciaire. Stéphanie Solinas then looked for a model with an obvious resemblance to the composite portrait to photograph. Slipped into the book jacket, a crystal pocket contains the identity photos of the "real" Dominique Lambert, author of the Chinese portraits, and thus closes the chain of representations imagined by the artist.34,00€ -
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David de Beyter – Damaged Inc.
BooksFor three years, David de Beyter followed the "Big Bangers", a community in Northern Europe that practices car crashing as a way of life. On the circuits, the parking lots, the bare fields, the artist captured the essence of a practice that shapes the landscapes of his childhood. This long-term project mixing films, photographs and sculptures will result in 3 editions (2 books and a vinyl). Damaged Inc. the first one, with its black and white printing, its double-page collages that render the cars by fragments, and the slogans that illustrate the philosophy of the followers of this practice, is directly inspired by the aesthetics of the original fanzines created by the "Big Bangers".25,00€ -
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Erwin Wurm – Photographs
BooksErwin Wurm Photographs is published on the occasion of the first retrospective devoted by the Maison Européenne de la Photographie to his photographic practice. The book sheds light on the work of Erwin Wurm, an internationally renowned artist, from this new perspective. Bringing together some 600 photographs taken since the late 1980s, this comprehensive publication will also present original contact sheets and prints from the artist's personal archives, which have never before been made public. The book explores the artistic process by which the Austrian artist created such major works as the Dust Sculptures, Fabio Getting Dressed, and the famous One-Minute Sculptures, as well as recent large-format Polaroids. This monograph highlights the unique role played by the photographic medium in Wurm's work: far more than a means of immortalizing his performances, photography is for him a form of "sculptural" expression in its own right. Erwin Wurm was born in 1954 in Austria. He lives and works between Vienna and Limberg.45,00€ -
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Laurence Aëgerter – Cathédrales
BooksThe book Cathedrals and Churches of France, published in 1949 by the Ministry of Public Works, Transport and Tourism, is the origin of Laurence Aëgerter's Cathedrals facsimile. The artist placed the work near the window of her studio, and allowed the incidence of natural light to affect a reproduction of the facade of the Cathedral of Saint-Etienne in Bourges. She then re-photographed the image every minute for two hours, obtaining one hundred and twenty photographs of light variations on this single image. The play of light and shadow that outlines the Gothic architecture in the original photograph is superimposed by a new shadow that slowly evolves over the cathedral and, in an almost imperceptible but irremediable way, ends up engulfing it. Aëgerter's photographs thus contain three times.48,00€ -
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Hassan Hajjaj
BooksFrom the diversity of his influences, Hassan Hajjaj, Anglo-Moroccan artist, has created a form of artistic crossbreeding, a whimsical and eccentric universe that engages in a dialogue between tradition and modernity, culture and pop culture. Known for his ultra-colored portraits at the border between documentary practice and fashion photography, he also associates in his compositions African loincloths, cans, logos or monograms diverted. He thus elaborates a kind of visual reappropriation of globalized consumer products and proposes a critical interpretation of oriental exoticism. Simply titled Hassan Hajjaj, this book published on the occasion of the retrospective that the MEP is devoting to him in September 2019, is the first major monograph devoted to his work. It includes all of the series that have made him famous as well as his previously unpublished B/W work.35,00€ -
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Mazaccio & Drowilal – The happiness project
BooksIn 2014, the artists Mazaccio and Drowilal travelled to Silicon Valley in California, the now mythical territory where the majority of the digital tools we use daily are designed. The book The Happiness Project- A journey through Silicon Valley - restores in the form of a photographic sequence, the subjective and chromatic documentary of this trip. It is about counter-culture and the link that computers have with it, but also about New Age, ecological awareness, or intensive sports practice. The still lifes, a kind of contemporary vanity that punctuates the work, symbolize the Californian ideology and the relationship to work maintained within the companies of this region.30,00€ -
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Tiane Doan na Champassak – Sale
BooksTiane Doan na Champassak discovered on the Web Noname Jane, an American pornographic actress who ended her career after having participated in more than 300 films. In 2007 she announced, via her website, the sale of all the sex toys she used for her photo shoots and films. Continuing his practice of appropriation Champassak gathers in this book the complete collection of sex toys accompanied by the comments of the actress. He then learned directly from Noname Jane that the entire collection had been destroyed in a fire. As a result, the actress closed down her site permanently.25,00€ -
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Erik Kessels – Shit
BooksThere is no dignity or modesty in wartime. Erik Kessels reveals an unusual facet of the conflict, one that history books do not usually dwell on. Despite the horror and chaos of hostilities, some moments of daily life remain unavoidable, even on the battlefield. The book Shit is an illustrated account of German soldiers defecating in combat during World War II.35,00€ -
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Tomoko Sawada – Recruit
BooksFollowing in the footsteps of Cindy Sherman, Tomoko Sawada embodies the second generation of female artists who choose the photographic mise-en-scène to explore the question of identity and denounce contemporary cultural conventions. This young Japanese artist is particularly interested in the photographic practice within our society such as class, wedding or fashion studio photography. She disguises herself as a multitude of characters to bring out the stereotypes of these customs and habits. With Recruit, Tomoko Sawada continues her work on self-portraiture in contemporary Japanese society. This time she explores the identity photographs that Japanese students take at the end of their studies, in order to look for a job. She has kept the established formal conventions (costume, posture, neutral facial expression), but to thwart them by introducing a subtle variation. From a strict photographic device, taking up the codes of the photo booth (a light always similar, an invariant framing, the same pose), she multiplies the images by playing on her hairstyle, her make-up, and the expression given to her face. She amazes by the difference she makes possible and visible on her face, and demonstrates the relative character of all appearance. Arranged in a grid in the book, the three portrait plates offer a global vision of their number, at the same time as they invite the eye to scroll from one face to another.32,00€ -
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Tiane Doan na Champassak – Censored
BooksFor the past ten years, Tiane Doan na Champassak has been collecting Thai erotic magazines dating from the 60s and 70s. As nudity in magazines was forbidden at the time, the photographs were censored with care and creativity. The artist used his collection of over 4000 photographic details to create the book Censored addressing the themes of eroticism and censorship. An Instagram account dedicated to the 4200 photographs of the Censored project was created in July 2017. This principle of censorship today very common on social networks takes on a particular content with these images from the 1960s-70s. www.instagram.com/censored.book60,00€ -
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Thomas Mailaender – Gone Fishing
BooksGone Fishing tells, in the form of a collection of fictitious correspondences, the modern epic of a young man who prefers vacations with friends to his new responsibilities as a father. In the course of the letters, Thomas Mailaender paints an unflattering portrait of a teenage Ulysses more inspired by beer, big game fishing and ping-pong than by the joys of fatherhood. Each of the 19 letters collected here is illustrated with a portrait of the young father performing a feat of appalling banality to excuse his absence. These images are photomontages made by the artist from amateur photos collected on the internet.38,00€ -
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Erwin Wurm – Self-Portrait as 47 Pickles
BooksThe pickle is a recurring figure in Erwin Wurm's work. In 2008, he created an installation entitled Selbstportät all Gurken (Self-portrait in gherkins), in which he placed all the gherkins from the contents of a jar, replicated in painted resin, on their pedestals. Each condiment was then photographed with the same shooting protocol. The artist's book Self-Portrait as 47 Pickles brings together this series.38,00€ -
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Chris Rhodes – Hotel Mermaid Club
BooksHotel Mermaid Club, Chris Rhodes' first book, is an ode to everyday life. The English photographer transforms reality to create a poetic and soothing universe full of melancholy. His sense of color and framing creates a very personal aesthetic of banality. Although the portrait in the traditional sense of the term does not appear, the book finds its humanity in the narrative, the occupied spaces and the everyday objects to which we no longer pay attention.38,00€ -
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Douglas Mandry – Équivalences
BooksDouglas Mandry explores the photographic medium in the age of digitization and the technological acceleration that follows. Still using analog processes, his interventions on the image are done by hand, either by applying different historical photographic processes, or by physically cutting and pasting them. For the Unseen Sights series that makes up the book Equivalences, the Swiss photographer was inspired by early 20ᵉ century Middle Eastern postcards, and colored large format black and white prints of landscapes in Cappadocia, Turkey, using acrylic and airbrush. These compositions then being rephotographed. Rather than reproducing these images, the book is a pretext for another interpretation. By playing with the layers of color in the print, the artist creates a new machine-generated representation, a mechanical intervention this time. The original images merge with those transformed and sketch a sequence claiming non-narration. Its title pays homage to Stieglitz's famous "Equivalents" series of vertically shot images of pieces of sky and clouds, known as the first series of abstract photographs. Douglas Mandry is a young Swiss photographer. A 2013 graduate of Ecal, he combines his photography practice with plastic reflection. By mixing visual elements and color, Douglas creates images that lie between art, sculpture and still life.39,00€