Bøker utgitt av Kerber Christof Verlag

Usually, people who talk about the Camino de Santiago mention the many kilometers they have travelled, the countless encounters along the way, and evenings spent in rustic guesthouses. Willi Filz (b. 1962) travelled the two great northern Spanish Caminos between 2015 and 2022 after falling victim to a twist of fate. His enchanting landscape and nature photographs do not show streams of pilgrims, lodgings, or cathedrals, but instead bear direct testimony to the experience of stillness and contemplation. The black and white photographs show motifs viewed directly from the Camino, drawn from moments of pause and contemplation. The photographer is not concerned with any kind of spectacular narrative. "The incidental is always there on our journeys, the insignificant always plays a part - and, if I pay attention to it, it whispers in my ear many of the answers I have spent years searching for."

Dennis Scholl uses repetition. Though he does not always paint the same picture, he repeatedly returns to the same point. The terrain he passes through could be a dream landscape from a night twenty years ago. 'Landscape' is suggestive of nature, but the reality portrayed here seems fake. It is more of a park, in which nature has been replicated. And Scholl is not alone here. There are others whom he encounters over and over. But they are no ordinary passers-by; their faces seem like masks - indeed, some of them do wear masks. Are these creatures without expression? My impression is that there are certain arrangements in place within this loose community. Few things are self-evident here. For the most part, there seems to be more of a skirting around the edges of what is directly obvious. The fingers I would use to point at it would need to have more digits than I have on my hand. (Hans-Christian Dany)

In her sculptures, installations, films, and interventions in public spaces, Croatian artist Luiza Margan explores the disparity between officially recorded history and history which is invisible. She questions the ways in which power structures and ideological systems are etched into the public sphere and interwoven into collective memory.The installation Cache, created in the course of the Artist-in-Residence-Program of the ZF Kunststiftung, examines the traces of National Socialist rule left in the city of Friedrichshafen. The title alludes to a hidden location, a concealed storehouse for information.

In her works, Nina Annabelle Märkl (b. 1979) develops permeable viewing spaces that lie at the interface between drawing, object, and installation. The viewers move through landscape-like settings in modular spatial installations, entering into various dialogues with the works. In addition, through the shift in perspective, they can experience the possibility of seeing themselves in their own observations and can question the structures of their perception.The monograph Scapes unites various strands of Nina Annabelle Märkl's work in the diversity of their links and leaps between drawing and spatiality, which follow on from one another in the diversity of manifestation or interpenetrate one another in individual arrangements.

Since moving from Amsterdam to the rural Uckermark region in north-eastern Germany, artist Marieken Verheyen has undertaken small sensory expeditions into the fascinating forest areas just a short walk from her atelier. She searches for traces of their inhabitants and the people who use the forest and attempts to feel her way into the forest creatures' ways of seeing and thinking. In the process, Verheyen finds, again and again, that the entire world can be found compressed into this small area: contradictory ideas of nature, the often opposing interests of various users of the forests, and the destructive influence of the climate crisis. Her images also depict the irresistible yet elusive power and beauty of nature.

Internationally renowned artist Heiner Meyer (b.1953) utilizes Pop Art strategies, combining visual material from a vast variety of contexts. His paintings combine comic figures, compositions by Picasso or Hockney, and advertising for modern luxury brands, condensing them into a new pictorial creation that allows for a diverse range of reflections that update the critical potential of Pop Art in the face of contemporary consumerism.The publication Pop Art Now shows various views of the installation and paintings from the exhibition at the Kunstforum Wien, as well as recent works from the last two years. In her text, art historian Dr Renée Gadsden provides insights into the exhibition and Heiner Meyer's oeuvre since the beginning of his artistic career.

Matthias Mansen (b. 1958) is one of contemporary art's most influential woodcut artists. With his monumental color woodcuts, which consist of several printing blocks and are often printed in overlays and ever-new states, Mansen has significantly advanced the art of woodcutting and brought new opportunities for expression to the technique.The major retrospective at the Gottorf Castle Museum of Art and Cultural History and the Kunstmuseum Singen shows works spanning four decades. The centerpiece is Mansen's most recent series Triest oder die Götter (Trieste or The Gods), in which Mansen focuses on the motif of bathers, a subject matter that has recurred throughout art history. For him, their poses and gestures open up a world of associations with ancient Greek and Roman sculptures, which he explores in his works.

The exhibition catalogue Dreihundert Berge (Three Hundred Mountains) comprises a select one hundred paintings by the Chinese artist Haiying Xu (b. 1975). In her work, Xu, who came to Germany more than two decades ago, continues to explore issues of personal identity at the tense interface between heritage, homeland, and migration. Haiying Xu's memories of the traditional cultures of southeastern China give rise to a reinterpretation of childhood fascination, imagination, and the experience of nature, though her paintings are also very specifically inspired by the colorful costumes of the Peking opera, classical Chinese literature, and the spatial concepts of shadow theater. Despite its retrospective character, the main focus of this catalogue is her most recent work, which will be on display in 2024 as part of a solo exhibition at Galerie Andreas Binder in Munich.

Hans Uhlmanns (1900-1975) Metallplastiken und Zeichnungen prägten das Bild deutscher Nachkriegsmoderne. Von den Nationalsozialist*innen 1933 inhaftiert, entwarf er im Gefängnis Skizzen filigraner Drahtköpfe, die er nach seiner Entlassung verwirklichte. In den 1950er-Jahren entwickelten sich seine figurativen Formen zu abstrakten Kompositionen weiter. Die Ausstellungin der Berlinischen Galerie zeichnet anhand von rund achtzig Werken Uhlmanns Schaffensperioden von den 1930er- bis in die 1970er-Jahre nach und untersucht neben seinem zeichnerischen und bildhauerischen Schaffen seine Rolle innerhalb der West-Berliner Kunstszene. Es ist die erste umfassende Retrospektive seit mehr als fünfzig Jahren.

When does the history of Islam in Germany begin? How do Muslims live in this country? How do they maintain their faith and how do they contribute to society? In Moin und Salam, photojournalist Julius Matuschik and political and religious studies scholar Raida Chbib explore these and other questions without offering simple answers. The illustrated book follows the traces and stories of Islam and Muslims in Germany from the past to the present, and it invites the reader to discover the diversity and vibrancy of Muslim life over time through images.

Guaymallén is a municipality in the province of Mendoza in Argentina. It was here that La Chola Poblete, Deutsche Bank's "Artist of the Year" 2023, was born in 1989. The choice to name the exhibition and publication Guaymallén is the artist's tribute to her roots and a reflection on her queer identity.La Chola Poblete is one of the most renowned Latin American artists. Her work combines biographical and cultural-aesthetic references with fundamental criticism. La Chola engages with the consequences of colonialism and capitalism, especially in the context of the obliteration and stereotyping of Indigenous peoples and cultures.

The photographic series Banoo by Samaneh Khosravi (b. 1984) addresses the position ofwomen in Iran today. Despite decades of oppression by a male-dominated society, women aresteadily gaining ground in science and the world of work. In order to obtain insight into thesituation of women in Iran and how they see themselves, the Iranian-German photographeraccompanied protagonists from various different social strata and locations in Iran throughtheir everyday lives. The resulting images show women who, contrary to the offi cial governmentdogma, are an integral part of social life and are already paving the way for a new generationthat will continue to stand up for dignity and the right to personal self-determination in the future.The term Banoo is a word used to refer to women that indicates respect and means "lady."

Contemporary And (C&) ist eine dynamische Plattform für die Reflexion und Vernetzung von Ideen und Diskursen über zeitgenössische Kunst aus Afrika und ihrer globalen Diaspora. C& Magazine veröffentlicht wöchentlich Beitrage, Kolumnen, Rezensionen und Interviews auf Englisch und Französisch. C& America Latina Magazine (C& AL) fokussiert künstlerische und diskursive Verbindungen zwischen Lateinamerika, der Karibik und Afrika.2023 ist ein besonderes Jahr für C&, denn die Plattform wird zehn Jahre alt! All that it holds. Tout ce qu'elle renferme. Tudo o que ela abarca. Todo lo que ella alberga versammelt eine Auswahl wichtiger Texte aus den lebendigen Archiven der beiden Onlinemagazine und vermittelt einen Einblick in zentrale Diskussionen und Fragestellungen rund um die Kunst der Gegenwart im afrikanischen Kontext.

H2O-scapes by Sylvie Leblanc (b. 1959) are photographic studies of the sky and the water, created between 2009 and 2023 in La Malbaie, Canada. All fifty-seven photographs were taken from the same location and depict the various physical states of the water in and above the Saint Lawrence River. Sometimes the landscape is entirely shrouded in fog without any visible horizon line; sometimes the outlines of islands are visible. Dramatic cloud formations, drifting ice floes or soft waves: Leblancs landscape remains the same and yet is presented in a multitude of different ways. Her photographs transform the dynamic play of the water molecules into a moment of stillness-and a space for dreams and contemplation.

With her first comprehensive monograph Infinite Walk, Katharina Lehmann (b. 1984) invites the reader on an individual artistic journey through her impressive oeuvre. The process of creating her works involve the artist walking back and forth using her unique thread-drip painting technique to create a fabric made up of hundreds of thousands of kilometres of yarn and acrylic paint which Lehmann then uses in a multitude of ways to create spatial installations, objects and pictures. Like a journey, the book also has several stages. In a total of eight chapters, the publication illuminates the artist's most significant creative phases to date. Beginning with 2014, which Katharina Lehmann described as her personal 'ground zero', the presentation extends to the present day and provides an outlook to new horizons.

Kathrin Landa (b. 1980) is a graduate of the prestigious Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig and devotes her art entirely to portrait painting. Her highly acclaimed works live from their expressive objectivity. This catalogue, with an introduction by Michael C. Maurer, showcases the broad spectrum of her work to date, from commissioned pieces to artistic analyses of people at their emotional limits. In his insightful observations, the author Christoph Kolk traces the poetry of her paintings. Stern journalist and couples therapist Nina Poelchau examines Landa's double portraits and finds that they reveal existential patterns of human relationships. Lastly, writer, artist and curator Martin Oswald explains the creation of a portrait from the perspective of the sitter. This richly illustrated publication is more than just a monograph-it is also a work about the very essence of portraiture.

In her photographic series Paris - 9 Rue de l'Université, Frizzi Krella (b. 1970) explores the seemingly mundane subject of a window front undergoing renovation work. With her precise eye, she transforms her observations into a multifaceted reflection of the moment, a composition of the ephemeral. Krella's photographs are an invitation to investigate the world, with its various distortions and compositions, as if it were a puzzle. They are an opportunity to delight in the playful appropriation of the various layers of reality and coincidence in order to assimilate the things we have seen into the cosmos of our own experience of art and the world around us. Thus, her work takes us all the way back to the very origins of photography and to the Paris of two centuries ago, when moments first began to achieve timelessness.

Sportives! is a collection of black and white portraits of women practicing sports. All sports of the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris are represented. The photos show women of all ages, of all origins, coming from all regions of France, amateurs in the first sense of Olympism. The artistic vision is the encounter between women's sport and the gaze of a photographer. Eric Mistler combines all the emotions created by sport with the timelessness of black and white photography. For Mistler, each shooting session is a moment of complicity and empathy with the woman practicing her sport; he offers a subtle mix of pure portraits and portraits in action. By his vision he sublimates the splendour of sport.

Since 1953, the Kulturkreis der deutschen Wirtschaft im BDI e. V. has awarded the annual ars viva prize for visual arts to outstanding young artists based in Germany. The award honours work that demonstrates a distinct language of form and an awareness of contemporary issues. This year's award includes exhibitions at the Rudolf-Scharpf-Galerie of the Wilhelm-Hack-Museum in Ludwigshafen, and at the Belvedere 21 in Vienna, as well as an artist residency on Fogo Island, Canada. The ars viva prize 2024 will be awarded to Atiéna R. Kilfa (b. 1990), Daniel Lie (b. 1988) and caner teker (b. 1994).

What would happen if humankind were to disappear? What would planet earth look like without us? In his monograph The World Without Us, Rainer Zerback (b. 1958) shows us such a world-in quiet images, shimmering with heat but without any trace of apocalyptic bluster. Targeted image editing brings individual everyday items into sharp focus. We encounter only traces of human civilization: cars, electricity pylons, all kinds of different dwellings. What at first glance gives the impression of peaceful seclusion, is at second glance unsettling and disconcerting.Rainer Zerback began Contemplationes at the end of the 1990s and continued the series until 2022. It comprises a total of sixty-nine works, fifty of which are collected for the first time in this publication. In her accompanying text, cultural scientist Lotte Dinse for the first time in reception history develops the interpretation of the series as a depiction of a 'World without Us'.

In his latest series of works, entitled 1000 Odysseen, Winfried Muthesius (b. 1957) uses his photographs to explore the globally divisive topics of refugeeism and displacement. The artist, who lives and works in Berlin and Cape Verde, photographed items washed ashore on the remote beaches of the Cape Verde islands. These disturbingly poetic images for the most part show details of damaged or destroyed flip-flops-the simple footwear of people living in poverty.In the exhibition at the Stiftung Christliche Kunst Wittenberg, Muthesius enters into a dialogue with Oskar Kokoschka's piece Rest on the Flight into Egypt, using this example to evoke humankind's long history of flight and exile.This book features numerous images from the series, with hitherto unpublished drawings by the artist, images of works from his broken gold series, as well as texts by Pia Beckmann, Christhard-Georg Neubert, and an interview with Winfried Muthesius.

In "Broken Memories" Andréas Lang explores the themes of recollection and history in Turkey. In a series of photographs and videos, he reflects on the disappearance, the discontinuity and the multiple layers of historical writings as well as the overwriting that leaves visible traces of a collective memory long since rendered invisible. He focuses on the contemporary approach to history, but especially on places with links to the later Ottoman Empire, the Armenian heritage and the 1915 genocide. Lang describes his work as visual archaeology that exposes the many layers of history and of mythology, as well as of the present day.

In his work, Dor Guez (b. 1982) explores the relationship between art, memory, storytelling and historiography. The examination of archives, maps, and local narratives has become the hallmark of his approach. Amid Imperial Grids was born out of his artistic analysis of the work of artist Felix Nussbaum and the Felix Nussbaum Haus in Osnabrück, designed by Daniel Libeskind. Here, Guez has created a truly unique site-specific installation based on the interweaving of biography and history, the past and memory, cartography and the demarcation of borders. He addresses the peculiarities of the architecture and creates a content-rich spatial setting that reflects on concepts such as nation, culture, history, identity, territoriality and geopolitics.

The photobook "No Fat Poetry" is a democratic marriage of image and text, without any subordination or superordination of either. Nowadays, new media communicates a hitherto unimagined quantity of images. This means that, today, images are far more dependent on their context, and it is within these contexts that they generate an importance that may change, depending on where the image appears or who or what the image is juxtaposed with-in this case, text and typography. The origins of the texts are democratic too, and almost all of them are recycled (samplings). They are quotes by artists and photographers; they come from the street or from photo - graphic theory or aesthetics. Ultimately, the involvement of the photographers is also democratic, including newcomers and established photographers alike (e.g., Thomas Demand, Alex Prager, Jörg Sasse, Alec Soth, Josef Sudek, Jürgen Teller, Jeff Wall).

"Anders Existieren (XO)" wurde als Ausstellungs- und Diskursprogramm in Berlin und Tamale (Ghana) von Isabel Lewis, Ibrahim Mahama und Solvej Helweg Ovesen konzipiert. Das Buch präsentiert die transformativen Kunstwerke und die Diskurse, die im Rahmen dieses Projektes während der COVID-19-Pandemie entstanden sind. Künstler*innen, Choreograph*innen, Vordenker*innen für Sustainable Leadership und Wissenschaftler*innen reflektieren in Interviews und "Umschulungs"-Vorträgen über die Zukunft des Zusammenlebens, den Umgang mit dem gesellschaftlichen und physischen Kollaps, Recycling und den Raum, den die Kunst für die Transformation bietet.

Christian Hellmich (b. 1977) creates works characterized by gestural abstraction and the asymmetric arrangement of planes of color, which are used to develop a kind of geometric grid pattern that dissects the pictorial space. This avoids any uniform perspective so that spaces penetrate into one another, and various image planes appear simultaneously. The fragments of motifs Hellmich assembles are taken from his extensive image archive of photographs, magazine cuttings, Internet sources, postcards and more. His approach is shaped by society's handling of images in today's mediatized age. References to architectural structures and comic-like shapes trigger associations without being clearly categorizable, rousing interest in their assumed decryption.

"Tanz auf der Klinge" (Dance on a Knife's Edge) is the first monograph by the artist Willehad Eilers aka Wayne Horse (b. 1981). This publication features works created between 2018 and 2023, presenting the many facets that make up the artist's universe-from blind drawing to graffiti and monumental oil paintings. Eiler's visual world, made up of grotesquely lewd scenes, reveals a generous portion of humor while exploring the darkest depths of society.Studio images and photographs from Eiler's everyday life provide an insight into his creative process. This visual journey is accompanied by interviews with the artist, brief explanatory texts and the notes that in many cases served as the starting points for the works depicted here.

In "Chemical Alterations 2012-2022" präsentiert Doug Fogelson eine Fotoserie, die die vielfältigen Auswirkungen des Klimawandels auf unserem Planeten widerspiegelt. Mit einem Verfahren, in dem traditionelle Landschaftsfotografien einem chemischen Bad aus giftigen Reinigungsmitteln ausgesetzt werden, um den analogen Originalfilm zu verändern, veranschaulicht Fogelson die oft unsichtbaren Veränderungen der Umwelt. Diese Veränderungen kulminieren in katastrophalen Ereignissen wie Bränden, Überschwemmungen, Dürren, immer stärkeren Stürmen und der allgemeinen globalen Erwärmung. Bilder von Naturräumen wie Bergen, Wüsten, Vulkanen, Dschungeln, Ozeanen, Flüssen und Wäldern werden in einem Zustand des Wandels dargestellt. Durch die Bearbeitung des Films werden Spuren wie Blasen, Kristalle, Fingerabdrücke und Staub in die Bilder integriert, die sich an der Grenze zur Abstraktion befinden.

"Andreas Chwatal. Ink Wash on Paper" versammelt die 300 wichtigsten Papierarbeiten des Münchner Künstlers (*1982) der letzten 17 Jahre. Die bisweilen minutiös gezeichneten Arbeiten sind Teil einer fortlaufenden, romanhaften Bilderzählung, die hier erstmals vollständig präsentiert wird.Durch einen Textteil mit kunsthistorischer Analyse, ein Künstlerinterview sowie einer ausführlichen Übersicht aller abgebildeten Arbeiten, besitzt die Erstmonografie den Charakter eines Werkverzeichnisses. Zugleich wird die in der Gegenwartskunst einzigartige Erzähl- und Zählweise der lavierten Pinselzeichnungen beleuchtet.