Produced on the occasion of the exhibition R.H. Quaytman: An Evening, Chapter 32 at Secession, Vienna, 17 November, 2017–28 January, 2018. This text is published as an advance copy from the artist’s book R.H. Quaytman. An Evening, Chapter 32.

Spine resembles a catalogue raisonné of R.H. Quaytman’s work produced since 2001, the year the artist began organizing paintings in what are called “Chapters.” Conceived and written by Quaytman, this more than 400-page volume presents a full decade’s output, from “The Sun, Chapter 1” to “Spine, Chapter 20,” the latest series which revisits motifs elaborated in the preceding nineteen chapters. A text articulating the artist’s systematic pictorial practice, executed on Golden Section wood panels, is printed on the book’s unfolding dust jacket.

Chapter 24 illustrates 61 paintings from the exhibition of the same name at the Museum Abteiberg in Mönchengladbach, Germany, 3 June–4 November, 2012. This latest chapter employs a variety of images directly related to Museum Abteiberg and Mönchengladbach. Many of the paintings are made from the museum’s image archive, and photographs taken by the artist of works in the permanent collection. These images are presented alongside several small portraits of their custodian, chief curator Hannelore Kersting.

The boxed set of 61 cards depicts each painting accompanied by corresponding notes written by the artist about each image. Additionally, the box includes an essay on Chapter 24 by Mark Godfrey, a facsimile of Yve-Alain Bois’ early essay The Tree and the Square, plus the original 1977 version L’arbre et le carré, and a new German translation. The box format is a direct reference to the famous catalogues published by the Museum in Mönchengladbach under the direction of Johannes Cladders.

Produced on the occasion of R.H. Quaytman: The Sun Does Not Move, Chapter 35, Muzeum Sztuki, Lodz, a kind of conceptual retrospective, where the artist has re-read earlier Chapters of the constantly developed project, and returned to its origins closely related to Lodz and the works by Katarzyna Kobro and Wladyslaw Strzeminski. Apart from precisely selected works from earlier chapters, the exhibition has presented new paintings in which R.H. Quaytman continues her dialogue with the work of Polish artists and explores other aspects of her personal relationship with the Lodz museum.

Established in 1994 in honour of the Cologne art collector Wolfgang Hahn, the Wolfgang Hahn Prize has since been awarded annually to an exceptional, internationally known artist who is nonetheless not yet well known in Germany. In 2015 the prize was awarded for the first time to two artists, R.H. Quaytman and Michael Krebber. This publication honours the prizewinners, both of whom approach the medium of painting from a decidedly conceptual standpoint. With a foreword by Mayen Beckmann, an introduction by Yilmaz Dziewior, a laudation by Daniel Birnbaum, and an afterword by Hanspeter Sauter.

More than thirty years ago the Swiss-Argentine artist Vivian Suter (*1949) moved to the rain forest in Panajachel, Guatemala, to live on a former coffee plantation. Since then she has worked on her impressive paintings in her wooden-hut studio, as well as outdoors. Her canvases lie on the sandy ground or hang in trees; dust, mud, leaves, mangos, and insects leave their traces on them. Her painting is influenced by organic processes and coincidence—even natural disasters are her material, when flood waters make their mark on canvases, becoming part of her large, colorful paintings. With texts by Adam Szymczyk, contributions by R.H. Quaytman, Moyra Davey, Hendrik Folkerts. Designed by Studio Manuel Raeder.

You can see Rosalind Nashashibi’s film Vivian’s Garden here.