Plastic World - Hatje Cantz

An overhead shot of an open book with light blue-gray pages. Across the top of the spread, the title Plastic Pop is printed in a large, bold, black font. Below the title are two columns of text, one in English and the other in German. A sliver of a yellow page is visible on the left.

An open book displays two pages about inflatable art installations from the 1970s. The left page has a black-and-white photo of Haus-Rucker-Co's Oase Nr. 7, a large bubble with a palm tree attached to a building. The right page features three color film stills from Graham Stevens' video work, showing a person running on an inflatable surface.

An open art book on a white surface. The left page shows a glossy, translucent sculpture in shades of pink and orange, compressed into a wrinkled block, identified as César, Compression, 1970. The right page contains a block of text in two columns, one in English and one in German.

A close-up, angled shot of a thick book on a white background. The book has a gray spine with the publisher's name, Hatje Cantz, and part of the title, World, in black text. The front cover features a colorful abstract design in blue and red with large white letters.

The back of a book with a light blue cover, resting on a white surface. The cover features a large, circular graphic composed of numerous names printed in black, arranged in concentric lines. In the bottom left corner, a barcode and ISBN are visible.

A two-page spread from a book about plastic in art. On the left is a black-and-white photograph of artist Claes Oldenburg on a busy London street in 1969, carrying a giant, soft sculpture of a toothpaste tube. On the right is the book's table of contents in German and English, with chapter titles like Plastic Pop, Plastic Trash, and Plastic Utopias.

A book page with black German text on a white background. On the left, a large title reads Plastic World: Eine Einführung, with the author's name Martina Weinhart below it. On the right, a column of text continues the article, with the page number 13 in the top-right corner.

A high-angle photograph of Thomas Bayrle's art installation, Tassenfasse. The piece is a large, circular, tiered sculpture on a tiled floor, constructed from many identical white teacups and saucers stacked to look like an overflowing fountain. The image includes text in both German and English, featuring a quote from the artist explaining the work as a representation of the overflowing porridge of mass production, like in a fairy tale.

A grid of sixteen film stills from Claes Oldenburg's 1971 work, Possibly a Special on the Bag. The images show the artistic process and various versions of a soft, red sculpture resembling an ice bag with a silver cap. The stills depict drawings, small models, and large-scale, inflatable versions of the object in different settings, including a desert, a beach, and floating on water.

A four-panel grid of black-and-white photographs by Francis Alÿs from the series Barrenderos. The photos document a performance where a line of street sweepers collaboratively pushes a large wall of ice and refuse down a city street at night. The images progress from a clear view of the workers to dynamic, motion-blurred close-ups that abstract the collective effort.

A page from an art book showing an artwork by Arman. On the left is a long quote in German attributed to Arman, 1973. On the right is a photograph of his artwork, Poubelle (1964), which is a transparent, black-framed box densely filled with an accumulation of trash, including crumpled paper, fabric scraps, a white card, and a Villiger-Kiel cigar box.

A photo collage of Otto Piene's 1976 art installation, Anemones: An Air Aquarium. The images, mostly in black and white with one color fisheye shot, show enormous, translucent, inflatable sculptures resembling sea creatures like lobsters and anemones. The glowing forms are suspended from the ceiling in a large exhibition hall.

A page layout with three black and white photographs of Wolfgang Döring's 1966 architectural model, Stapelhäuser. The images show the futuristic, tower-like structure, composed of stacked, white, modular pods interconnected by tension wires, from different angles and in close-up detail.

A page from an art book displaying two all-white, three-dimensional wall sculptures by Ferdinand Spindel. The piece on the left, from 1974, is a single, turbulent mass of foam-like, bubbly textures inside a white frame. The piece on the right, from 1977, features four stacked, soft, horizontal forms with smaller lumpy clusters on their surfaces, also in a white frame. A block of German text is next to the artwork on the right.

A book page featuring a black and white photo of artist Eva Hesse in her Bowery studio in 1969 on the left. She stands with her arms raised, holding up a large, crinkled sheet of translucent plastic that envelops her. On the right, a quote from Hesse is printed in English and German, where she rejects sentimentality and prettiness in art in favor of a direct and unpretentious use of materials.

A detail of a sculpture by Paul Thek from his Technological Reliquaries series, presented on a book page. A textured, flesh-like mass in mottled shades of brown and green is enshrined within a multi-tiered, fluorescent yellow-green acrylic case. Thin, bright yellow bands are wrapped horizontally around the translucent structure against a plain white background.

A split-panel image of a sculpture. The left panel shows the full artwork: a tall, rough, turquoise-colored monolith on a light blue base, with small, pale yellow fungi sprouting from its surface. The right panel is a close-up view, highlighting the delicate, translucent, fan-shaped fungi against the sculpture's mottled and pitted texture.

Plastic World

€ 48.00

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Edited by: Dr. Martina Weinhart

July 2023, 256 Pages, 130 Photos

Hardcover

224mm x 284mm

ISBN: 978-3-7757-5467-5

HATJE CANTZ VERLAG
Mommsenstr. 27
10629 Berlin
Germany
E-Mail: contact@hatjecantz.de

According to Article 9(7) of the GPSR Regulation, no additional security information is required for books without supplements or special functions.

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| The Art of Plastic

Plastic is everywhere. It permeates our everyday lives, is inexpensive and available worldwide. Thanks to their literally astonishing plasticity, plastics soon began to fascinate artists as well—both as a symptom and a symbol of mass culture. In the brief history of the "Plastic Age" the versatile substance transformed though: from the epitome of progress, utopian spirit, and democratization of consumerism into a threat. Plastic World offers a broad panorama of the artistic use of plastic and a position towards a matter that matters to us all. Through more than 100 objects, assemblages, installations, environments and films by some 50 international artists, this catalogue explores a spectrum ranging from the euphoria of pop culture in the 1960s and the futuristic influence of the space age, to the "trash" works of Nouveau Réalisme and the ecocritical positions of today.

FEATURED ARTISTS SUCH AS: Monira Al Qadiri, Archigram, Arman, Lynda Benglis, César, Christo, Öyvind Fahlström, Haus-Rucker-Co, Eva Hesse, Hans Hollein, Craig Kauffman, Kiki Kogelnik, Gino Marotta, James Rosenquist, Pascale Marthine Tayou and Pınar Yoldaş.

EXHIBITION
SCHIRN Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main
June 22 - October 1, 2023