Sophie Berrebi

Fiona Tan

The Dutch artist Fiona Tan is well known for her photography, film, and video installations in which she frequently addresses ideas of identity, memory, and history. This publication documents on one hand recent works including a new large scale project commissioned by the Grand-Hornu Museum of Contemporary Arts in Mons, Belgium and presented here for the first time. This work, titled Shadow Archive, is inspired by Paul Otlet (1868-1944), considered to be one of the forefathers of information science. Shadow Archive deals in particular with Otlet's decades-long utopian quest to establish a central repository for the world's information; between 1919 and 1934, Otlet and his team assembled more than 16 million index cards of data. This book incorporate previously unpublished original drawings and notes drafted by Otlet selected by Fiona Tan for her installation, an amazing archive which reveal his visionary and creative personality as well as his exploration of the limits of the human knowledge.

Fiona Tan: L'archive des ombres - shadow archive

Jean Dubuffet

Dubuffet and the City. People, Place and Urban Space,? written and edited by renowned scholar Dr. Sophie Berrebi (University of Amsterdam), is the first in-depth study to address the work of Jean Dubuffet (1901-1984) in relation to the theme of the city. The book examines how the city plays a role in the formation and unfolding of Dubuffet?s practice and imagination as a material, a source, and a vehicle for ideas. It analyses works in which the artist depicts city dwellers, sites and urban spaces, and discusses his architectural projects from the 1960s and 1970s against the background of heated debates in the field of urbanism. The book accompanies and extends an exhibition at Hauser & Wirth Zurich (June?Sept 2018). Along with full color reproductions of art works the book reproduces little-known archival material from the archives of the Fondation Dubuffet. It also includes several texts by Dubuffet that are translated here in English for the first time.00Exhibition: Hauser & Wirth, Zürich, Switzerland (10.06.-01.09.2018).

People, Place, and Urban Space

Dubuffet and the City

The shape of evidence' examines the role and use of visual documents in contemporary art, looking at artworks in which the document is valued not only as a source of information but also as a distinctive visual and critical form. It contends that for artists who use film, photography or written sources, adopting formats derived from specific professional, industrial, scientific of or commercial contexts, the document offers a way to develop a critical reflection around issues of representation, knowledge production, art and its history. It addresses several issues that are key both in art and in general culture today: the role of the museum and the archive, the role of documents and the trust that is placed in them, the circulation of such images and the historical genealogies that can be drawn in relation to images. It is based on a close reading of a select number of works of art (e.g. Christopher Williams, Fiona Tan, Jean-Luc Moulène), which makes it approachable and engaging with the reader. The book investigates objects and ideas drawn from a wide spectrum of areas including literature, history, photography history, scientific representation, surrealism, conceptual art, commercial photography etc. Ultimately the book invites viewers to reflect upon the production and interpretation of seemingly straightforward images, and proposes that some artists can show us through their practice how to turn these deceptively simple images inside out.

Sophie Berrebi

Books

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