Berlin has seen huge upheavals, including its reinstatement as the capital city of the reunified Germany. This book considers the reasons behind Berlin's vital and vibrant art scene, profiling and assessing nineteen artists who feel a particular affinity with the city.

Dead or Alive features a unique body of work by the artist Mark Fairnington, whose recent painterly preoccupations - the pseudo-scientific documentation of hitherto unknown species of South American insects - address issues of verisimilitude, taxonomy, representation and meaning in art. Mark Gisbourne's contribution to the book places Fairnington's work within a postmodern art historical context where art and science, while informing one another, nevertheless remain distinctive disciplines. George McGavin, one of the world's most respected authorities on insect life has written an account of Fairnington and his experiences in the field, in search of new, uncategorised species of insect life. 50 colour illustrations

Foreword by Vishakha N. Desai. Text by Melissa Chiu, Kong Bu, Eleanor Heartney.

Published to coincide with the exhibition of the same name at Eykyn Maclean, New York, 3 November - 16 December 2016

The German-Swedish artist Ann Wolff (born in 1937) is one of the most significant and exciting proponents of the European studio glass movement. She has an expert understanding of the characteristics of glass and how to show off the complete spectrum of its diverse possibilities of expression. The publication offers an extensive overview of the period of work over the last ten, prolific years. With most of her large-format sculptures, the medium of glass plays a central role, but Ann Wolff is not restricted to it alone; she also uses other materials, such as bronze, concrete or aluminium. The catalogue is boosted by additional selected drawings and pastels. Common to these is the eponymous motif of 'persona', the character mask, which expresses the artist's continuous debate with philosophical and existential issues. In doubling and mirror imaging, in veiling and exposing, she revolves around fundamental questions of the Self and the Other and her bilateral perception. Ann Wolff holds an accolade from the Glass Art Awards of the Glass Art Society, Seattle, and of the European Culture Prize Pro Europe. She is represented in numerous prestigious museums and collections in Europe, the United States and Japan, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Nationalmuseum, Stockholm; Designmuseum Danmark, Copenhagen; Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, Sapporo; Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg; Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris; and Musee de design et d'arts appliques contemporains, Lausanne. Text in English and German."

The catalogue in connection with the exhibition Die Wahlverwandtschaften (The Elective Affinities) has no less a goal than comprehensively presenting the most important aspects of German art of the past 50 years - from the generation around Joseph Beuys u

Thomas Florschuetz brings parts of his own body into view and composes them into photos full of visual impact and confusing vagueness. Objects from daily life, too, are presented such that they transcend their normal function. Portions of plants or buildings, windows and curtains, are enlarged and hung in groups. Handled in this way, the subjects of his photographs attain an aura of mystery, detached from the world.

"Blotchy, overexposed, and unusually colored - Stefanie Schneider's suggestive photographs break with the conventions of the medium. The old Polaroid film she uses distorts in the surreal manner of road movies: billboards from the fifties, palm trees against a cyan-blue sky, candy-colored limousines, a gas station in the middle of nowhere. A graduate of the Folkwang School in Essen, Schneider populates these settings with young people who seem oddly lost; her colorful staging of normality seems to be subliminally threatened or threatening. Director Marc Forster had good reason to integrate Schneider's photographs into Stay, his new thriller starring Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts."--BOOK JACKET.

Fotografisk billedværk.