5th Art Book Triennial Martin 2025 @ Olomouc Museum of Art + After in Wrocław, Bratislava and Budapest - Artists and Artworks Highlights

5th Art Book Triennial Martin

Olomouc Museum of Art

27 February - 25 May 2025

After in Wrocław, Bratislava and Budapest

Martin Derner

Schillers sammtliche Werke / 

Schiller‘s Complete Works, 2024

Kižní papír, rámované / Book paper, framed, 2024

Monika Aleksandrowicz 

Fuzzy Sets – Palindrome, 2019/2024 

Tisk na plexisklo / Print on plexiglass

Maciej Jabłoński

Contribution to the Talk of Freedom, 2023

Vlastní technika, knižní objekt / 

Own technique, book object

Maciej Linttner 

Florenckie przenikania / Florentine Permeability, 2010–2024

Kombinovaná technika / Mixed media

Zuzana Šebelová 

Over Your Heads the Trees Will Grow, 2024

Papír, karton / Paper, cardboard

The author’s book as an important art form will be presented by the Olomouc Museum of Art in an exhibition that will have its premiere at the end of 2024 in Martin, Slovakia, at the 5th Triennial of the Art of the Book, co-organised by institutions from Olomouc, Wrocław, Bratislava and Budapest. Until 25 May 2025, visitors can see works by artists from the Central European region who bring a new perspective on the book as a medium and push the boundaries of visual art.

“Authors’ books are a unique combination and consonance of artistic, craft or technical disciplines with a personal creative language,” explains exhibition curator Gina Renotière.

The Olomouc Museum of Art has been involved in the regular international presentation of authors’ books at the Turčianska Gallery in Martina since the very beginning in 2015. The current fifth edition is an opportunity for artists to experiment with the spatial composition of the elements of the work and their incorporation into the installation in order to intensify the overall visual experience. The shape and visual variety of the exhibits is represented by a plethora of atypically created and invented jigsaw puzzles, loosely arranged leaf blocks, as well as spatial objects inspired by books by eighty artists from Slovakia, Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic.

Lajos Sejben 

„Remakes“ of World Literature (White Silence), 2023

Kombinovaná technika / Mixed media 

Ilona Simon 

Instant Illusion, 2021–2023

Kombinovaná technika / Mixed media

Dóra Matyus

Phonebook, 2023

Digitální kresba, průhledné fólie, ochranná skla na displej, magnety / 

Digital drawing, transparent foils, screen protector glasses, magnets

It probably comes as no surprise that paper remains the primary medium used to create an author’s book, but this is not a dogma. The exhibition features works made of wood, textile, metal, glass, plastic, silicone or concrete and their combinations. There are books as objects, books-installations, new media books but also books conceived in a performative or process approach.

“An important line in the concept of the Book Art Triennial is the integrated so-called touch library, in which the visitor and the reader in one person can leaf through book artifacts. This part of the show is addressed primarily to children, with the intention of contributing to the cultivation and shaping of their reading tastes,” adds Gina Renotière.

Zbigniew Sałaj

Drewutnia / Woodshed, 2010–2024

Tištěný papír, vlastní technika / Printed paper, own technique 

Xénia Hoffmeisterová

Záznamy / Entries, 2023

Kombinovaná technika / Mixed media 

After the Olomouc presentation, the project will move to the Book Art Museum in Łódź, Poland, and then to the Miskolc Gallery in Hungary.

ARTIST’S BOOKS AT THE OLOMOUC ART MUSEUM

The Olomouc Museum of Art owns one of the most important collections of artists’ books in the institutions of the former Czechoslovakia. An important impulse for its creation was an extraordinary acquisition in the second half of the 1990s, when, thanks to the cooperation with the Brno theoretician Jiří Valoch, the preparation of the exhibition “Between Tradition and Experiment” (1997) succeeded in concentrating on two dozen author’s books, mostly from the 1960s. Ladislav Daněk was the initiator of the establishment of a separate collection in 2000 and became its first curator.

The collection consists of a collection of works from the second half of the 20th century with an overlap to the present and was first presented at the exhibition “Leafing through Modern Book Culture in the Collections of the Olomouc Museum of Art” in 2009. 

CURATORS: Gina Renotière, Jarmila Kováčová

MAIN ORGANIZER: Turčianska Gallery in Martin

CO-ORGANISERS: Museum of Art Olomouc, Akademia Sztuk Pięknych im. Eugeniusz Geppert in Wrocław, Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava, Magyar Műveszkonyvalkotok Tarsasaga (Society of Hungarian Art Book 

Also on view at Olomouc Museum of Art:

Milan Dobeš. A Celebration of Colour, Light and Movement, March 20 - September 7, 2025

OLOMOUC MUSEUM OF ART

MUO - MUZEUM UMĚNÍ OLOMOUC

Denisova 47, 771 11, Olomouc 

www.muo.cz

Matthew McLendon: Director of the McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

Matthew McLendon: 

Director of the McNay Art Museum, 

San Antonio, Texas

Matthew McLendon

Photo Credit: Daniel Perales

McLendon to Lead the First Modern Art Museum in Texas Beginning February 13, 2023

The McNay Art Museum’s Board of Trustees has confirmed the appointment of Matthew McLendon, PhD, to serve as the museum’s fourth director in its 68-year history. McLendon comes to the McNay from The Fralin Museum of Art at The University of Virginia (UVA), where he served as the J. Sanford Miller Family Director and Chief Curator since 2017.

“Matthew’s dynamic experience as an art historian, museum director and curator will strengthen the McNay Art Museum’s position as a global destination for modern and contemporary art,” said Don Frost, President of the Board of Trustees. “We are confident that his expertise and strong commitment to civic engagement will advance the Museum’s vision of becoming a place of belonging for our diverse community.”

An energetic and influential leader, McLendon is widely recognized for his emphasis on community engagement and education, advocacy of cross-disciplinary programming and amplifying underrepresented and marginalized voices in the museum setting. At The Fralin, McLendon focused on invigorating the museum within the University and its wider constituencies. Museum attendance and major support increased and diversified dramatically during his tenure, along with the launch of new public programs, including Greenbrier Global Artists, an after-school program serving the children of asylum seekers.

“Under Matthew’s leadership, the Fralin Museum of Art has made tremendous strides in facilitating important conversations through the Museum’s collection and exhibitions,” said UVA Vice Provost for the Arts, Jody Kielbasa. “As director and chief curator, Matthew was devoted to sharing inclusive stories in the galleries, expanding the collection, bolstering audience engagement and garnering national media attention for the institution. His work and collaborative spirit left an indelible mark on the Fralin Museum of Art, the University of Virginia and our community of Charlottesville, and will benefit the Museum’s visitors and the UVA community for many years to come.”

Nationally-recognized exhibitions during McLendon’s tenure include a multi-sensory installation by Vanessa German, sometimes.we.cannot.be.with.our.bodies.; Unexpected O’Keeffe: The Virginia Watercolors and Later Paintings, an exhibition focusing on the critical yet little-known period that Georgia O’Keeffe spent as a student at UVA; and Skyscraper Gothic, investigating the European foundations of the fundamentally American skyscraper and its place in early 20th century material culture.

The Fralin also expanded its Native American collections under McLendon’s leadership, acquiring works by contemporary Native American artists including Wendy Red Star, Cara Romero, Rick Bartow and others. Earlier this year, the Museum was awarded a $250,000 American Art Program Responsive Grant from the Henry Luce Foundation to support new research and interpretation of the Native American collection through engagement with Native scholars, artists and knowledge holders.

As an advocate for emerging and mid-career artists in the museum setting, McLendon has worked with a host of significant voices in contemporary art in both thematic and solo exhibitions, among them: Vanessa German, R. Luke DuBois, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Beth Lipman, Sofía Maldonado-Suárez, Nick Cave, Sanford Biggers, Toni Dove, Mickalene Thomas, Zimoun, Anne Patterson, Emily Noelle Lambert, Aurora Robson, Jill Sigman, Mac Premo, Daniel Rozin, Alyce Santoro, Gajin Fujita, and more.

“The McNay Art Museum’s commitment to integrity, innovation, excellence and equity aligns with the work that has anchored my career,” said McLendon. “It is an honor to follow Richard Aste, and I eagerly anticipate furthering the institution’s mission to provide transformational experiences to the San Antonio community through a growing collection and thought-provoking exhibitions.”

McLendon will assume leadership duties at the McNay on February 13, 2023. Last summer, current director Richard Aste announced his plan to move to California in early 2023. Aste will remain in his role through February 10, 2023, ensuring a seamless transition in leadership for the Museum.

A Search Committee appointed by the McNay Board of Trustees–and led by Committee Co-Chairs Amy Stieren and Darryl Byrd–identified McLendon as the ideal candidate to serve as the next McNay Director.

“Matthew stood out from numerous, highly-qualified candidates as someone with a unique combination of business acumen, arts expertise, infectious positive energy and a true love for the integral role art museums play in the communities they serve,” said Darryl Byrd, McNay Board Member and Co-Chair of the Search Committee.

“We are thrilled to welcome Matthew and his innovative ‘leader as facilitator’ approach to the McNay and its talented staff as we collectively build upon the Museum’s legacy of excellence together,” said Amy Stieren, McNay Vice President and Co-Chair of the Search Committee.

ABOUT MATTHEW McLENDON, PhD

Before going to The Fralin, McLendon was recruited in 2010 by The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, the State Art Museum of Florida, as curator of modern and contemporary art and charged with reviving its dormant Modern and Contemporary program. In a museum then best known for its European paintings, McLendon undertook a series of high-profile exhibitions featuring rarely-seen works from The Ringling permanent collection. In 2011, Joseph’s Coat, a Skyspace by artist James Turrell, was opened under McLendon’s leadership and his original exhibitions began building larger regional and national audiences.

McLendon inaugurated and co-directed the Art of Our Time initiative, focused on living visual and performing artists. This cross-disciplinary programming series helped lead the way in The Ringling setting new records in attendance, membership, and support. Other high profile major exhibitions included the first museum survey of artist, composer, and performer R. Luke DuBois and an examination of living artists working with found objects (in the tradition of Marcel Duchamp) in Re:Purposed. McLendon concluded his time at The Ringling with the first museum survey of interactive cinema and live-mix performance pioneer Toni Dove. Major gifts to the permanent collection in support of the Modern and Contemporary program included substantial additions to The Ringling’s holdings; a new collecting emphasis on studio glass with major collection gifts; and two permanent additions to exhibition space, the Kotler-Coville Glass Pavilion and the Keith D. and Linda L. Monda Gallery of Contemporary Art.

His books and publications include: Toni Dove: Embodied Machines (Scala); EMIT: What the Bringback Brought (Ringling/Murphy); Re:Purposed (Scala); R. Luke DuBois—Now (Scala); Dana Hargrove: Inhabit (Bridgette Mayer Gallery, contributing writer); Back to the Futurists: The Avant Garde and Its Legacy (Manchester University Press, contributing writer); Jill Sigman: Ten Huts (Wesleyan University Press, contributing writer), among others.

McLendon previously served in curatorial and educational positions at the Rollins Museum of Art and Tate Britain, London. He has served as teaching faculty for graduate and undergraduate students at the University of Virginia, Florida State University, New College of Florida, and Rollins College, in addition to frequent guest lectures, interviews and media appearances. He earned his MA and PhD from the Courtauld Institute of Art of the University of London. He earned dual Bachelor of Arts degrees in Music and Art History at Florida State University, with magna cum laude honors. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Association of Art Museum Directors, American Alliance of Museums, and College Art Association among other professional organizations.

McNay Art Museum

6000 N New Braunfels Ave., San Antonio, TX 78209

www.mcnayart.org

Roxy Paine @ Kasmin Gallery, NYC - Normal Fault

Roxy Paine: Normal Fault

Kasmin Gallery, New York

November 4 - December 23, 2021

Roxy Paine 

Topographic, 2021

60 1/2 x 84 x 8 inches / 153.7 x 213.4 x 20.3 cm

Courtesy of the artist 

Kasmin presents an exhibition of new work by ROXY PAINE (b. 1966, New York). Comprising an installation of thirteen relief paintings and one of the artist’s Dioramas, the works extend Roxy Paine’s epistemological investigations into the interconnected structures that constitute both the natural world and the systems humanity has imposed on it.

Obscuring the delineation between abstraction and the representation of landscape, soil, and flora, the works deliberately obscure the scale of their subjects to present simultaneously micro- and macroscopic perspectives of biological and geological phenomena, as well as the maps we use to notate the world around us. Roxy Paine’s constructions of these phenomena, including mycelium, molds, and rock material, entangle the dichotomy of beauty and destruction as they draw parallels between the patterns associated with the organic, the industrial, and the digital. Whether cells, bolts, or pixels, Roxy Paine repeatedly brings the accumulation of these formative units into absurdity, asking us to question how perception is framed, filtered, and codified.

Roxy Paine’s exploration into stratigraphy acts to interweave three distinct temporal frameworks: geological, fungal, and human. Time becomes the subject, as well as the perception of time and the way that the understanding of geology forces a different frame of reference. The artist has long been fascinated by fungi and its ability to productively transform dead matter into building blocks that other entities can harness to create new life. Their traditional medicinal uses, to induce perceptual shifts and philosophical epiphanies, is also of interest.

Three works in the exhibition use the internal geometric structure of the American flag as a compositional beginning. Layered with complex symbolism and rendered in lifelike layers of sediment, they consider our planet’s ongoing transformation in both political and biological terms. Drawing on the irony of a country at pains to assert its authority despite rapid ecological decline, they lay bare the pallid resemblance that political or social systems have to the effortless perfection and complexity of nature.

Reverent of the immensity of geological time, Gros Ventre (2021) is titled after a wilderness situated nearby to the artist’s studio and residence in Wyoming. The area’s historic vulnerability to landslides has contributed to a distinctive and contrasting terrain, forming a mountain range which is broken by faults that form an asymmetrical arch. Roxy Paine uses this as a starting point to look at nature and the lenses through which we variously understand, analyze, mythologize, romanticize, and disturb the natural world.

Works that emphasize the man-made entropy of the earth are intentionally fraught in tone. In Large Green Pools (2021), what appears as a volcanic landscape is interrupted not by the chlorophyllic burst of plant life but by toxic craters almost extraterrestrial in their vibrancy. Large Sun (2021) and Small Sun (2021) present the eventual absorption of earth in space while also conjuring associations of rapidly multiplying bacteria or fungi, signaling the presence of death or the dying. Roxy Paine revels in this theatre of nature as he condemns its destruction by pollutants and emissions.

Distinct from the arborescence of the artist’s Dendroids (the structure of which mimic the branch-like networks of leaf structures and microchips), these works consider multiplicity, proliferation, and the slow layering of sediment over time to create the environments we recognize on earth during the epoch of the anthropocene. Presenting devastated landscapes, charred by fire or nuclear disaster, these works also develop previous major installations such as Desolation Row (2017).

ROXY PAINE’s work is the subject of numerous museum exhibitions worldwide including Roxy Paine: Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor at Beeler Gallery, Columbus College of Art & Design, OH, 2016–17; Natura Naturans at Villa Panza, Varese, Italy, 2015–16; and Roxy Paine: Scumaks and Dendroids at Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, MO in 2011.

In 2009, Roxy Paine was selected to create Maelstrom, a site-specific installation for the rooftop garden at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His work has also been installed in prominent public venues In New York City such as Madison Square Park in 2009 and Central Park in 2002.

Roxy Paine has been the recipient of many prestigious awards, including John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, the Asher B. Durand Award by the Brooklyn Museum and the Trustees Award for an Emerging Artist by the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. His work is included in prominent public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art New York, Museum of Modern Art San Francisco, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, National Gallery Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., North Carolina Museum of Art, Seattle Art Museum, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.

Major monographs of the artist’s work were recently published by Rizzoli in 2018, and by Skira in 2021.

ROXY PAINE

Text by Marc Mayer and Tan Lin

Published by Rizzoli Electa, November 2018

Hardcover, 288 p.

ROXY PAINE

Dioramas

Edited by Saul Anton

Texts by Mia Kang, Steven Matijicio and Michael Goodman

Published by Skira, 2021

Hardcover, 176 p., 145 ill.

KASMIN GALLERY

509 West 27th Street, New York, NY 10001

www.kasmingallery.com

Russian Avant-Garde, MoMA, NYC - The Russian Avant-Garde Book: 1910–1934

The Russian Avant-Garde Book: 1910–1934

MoMA, New York

March 21 - May 21, 2002

The Russian Avant-Garde Book, 1910–1934 is prompted by an extraordinary gift to MoMA of over 1,000 Russian avant-garde illustrated books from The Judith Rothschild Foundation, New York. The gift is the largest to the Department of Prints and Illustrated Books since Abby Aldrich Rockefeller established the collection in the 1940s with her donation of 1,600 prints. The Rothschild gift represents all the significant artistic developments of the period and features works by major artists including Kazimir Malevich, Olga Rozanova, Natalia Goncharova, El Lissitzky, Aleksandr Rodchenko, and many others. It also encompasses areas of special interest to members of the Russian avant-garde, including children’s books and Judaica. This comprehensive resource has been characterized by experts in the field as among the most significant collections of its kind worldwide.

The Rothschild gift joins over 400 works from the Russian avant-garde period already in the Museum’s collections of painting and sculpture, drawings, photography, film, architecture and design, prints and illustrated books, as well as the library. MoMA’s founding director, Alfred H. Barr, Jr., initiated the Museum’s interest in this crucial period in the history of modern art.

It is widely recognized that Russian avant-garde artists’ experimentation was fundamental to the development of abstraction in the early years of this century. The 1917 Revolution brought about a complete transformation of the artist’s role in Russian society with utilitarianism defining the new cultural climate. The exhibition is organized around three major themes:

A Slap in the Face of Public Taste

The first section is titled after an early manifesto by artists and poets, in which they responded to what they considered the stultifying conventions of academic taste and bourgeois sensibility. Natalia Goncharova, Mikhail Larionov, Olga Rozanova, Kazimir Malevich, among others, collaborated with writers and poets, including Aleksei Kruchenykh, Velimir Khlebnikov, and Vasilii Kamenskii, to forge a new language of abstraction through experimentation with Cubo-Futurism, Primitivism, and Rayonism. Many of these poets and painters practiced both mediums, and most were friends, siblings, or spouses; collaboration on books was one important result of this creative ferment. Early books were intended to shock the reader with variously sized pages made of coarse papers, illustrations entwined with printed, hand-written, and rubber-stamped text, as well as provocative covers.

Transform the World!

The second section expands on the developments of the earlier period. Artists turned to book design with great optimism to reach the masses. In both paintings and printed treatises, Malevich pushed abstraction to its limit in his development of Suprematism, conceived as a metaphysical visual metaphor for heralding the new world. Aleksandr Rodchenko and El Lissitzky were major artistic voices in the development of Constructivism, which focused on the rational and machine-made and came to symbolize a new future. Typography became an important aspect of Constructivism, often combined with bold black and red abstract designs. Poets such as Vladimir Mayakovsky, who was also an artist, played an integral role in the interdisciplinary development of illustrated books during this period. Photography was also a primary vehicle of communication, and photomontage dominated many covers and illustrations.

Building Socialism: Agitation Art

The final section of the exhibition presents the variety of ways the art of the book was used to serve the Soviet government’s agenda. Journals showcased modern Soviet architecture with covers of bold graphic design. Trade catalogues promoted Soviet industry with innovative layouts and typographical design. Magazines designed by avant-garde artists utilized photography and photomontage to spread the message of Soviet modernization and progress to the broadest possible audience. Innovative works by Lissitzky and Rodchenko, as well as by other artists including Varvara Stepanova, Solomon Telingater, Gustav Klutsis and the Stenberg brothers, demonstrate a continued experimentation with the book format. The exhibition ends with the notorious 1934 decree by Stalin that only Socialist Realism would be tolerated. Thus, a remarkable period of innovation in the production of illustrated books came to a close.

Catalogue

The Russian Avant-Garde Book: 1910–1934

Catalogue of the exhibition

© The Museum of Modern Art

A major publication illustrating all the books in the exhibition accompanies the exhibition. In addition to over 600 illustrations, the catalogue contains essays by the co-curators and other specialists: Jared Ash, Nina Gurianova, and Gerald Janecek. These includes an overview of the Russian avant-garde book in the context of the history of modern illustrated books; studies of the book both before and after the 1917 Revolution; and texts on specific stylistic and literary issues. The documentary portion of the book includes a complete checklist of all the books in the gift from The Judith Rothschild Foundation. There is also be a comprehensive bibliography and index.

The exhibition is organized by Deborah Wye, Chief Curator of Prints and Illustrated Books, The Museum of Modern Art, and Margit Rowell, Guest Curator.

The Russian Avant-Garde Book, 1910–1934 travels to the Museo Nacional Centra de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, November 4, 2002-January 27, 2003; and the Museum fur Angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, September 24, 2003-January 25, 2004.

MoMA - MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NYC

www.moma.org

Updated 16.01.2021