The latest issue in the publications’ 20-year history looks at the innately human desire to create systems and how artists across the world interpret this subject. As it’s inevitable that we’ll deal with different types of systems throughout our lives, issue number 18 focuses on precisely this. Many artists create their own systems and methods; setting up rules for creating their art, sorting their materials, following specific schedules, creating new worlds. In a way, such structures provide us with a framework for stretching the possibilities of our creative freedom.
The System Issue features artists who comment and question the system surrounding us, as exemplified in the blunt, political cartoons of Jim Carrey. Politics is a recurring theme which can also be found in Pablo Helguera’s satirical observations of the art system and the Captured Project’s expose of the American judicial system. Systems are also to be found in our own body movements, illustrated through the expressive body drawings by Trisha Brown and Tony Orrico – just a few of the many artists operating along the fertile ground between performative dance and drawing. Other topics are robotic drawings, neuroscience and chess, together with extensive interviews with Julie Mehretu, Giorgia Lupi and many more.
Editor: Björn Hegardt
Junior assistant: Alice Finney
Design: Ariane Spanier
Artists: Judith Braun, Jim Carrey, Hanne Darboven, Julie Mehretu, Trisha Brown, Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Sougwen Chung, Giorgia Lupi, Lionel Favre, Stella Geppert, Parul Gupta, Pablo Helguera, Ingrid Lønningdal, Pierre Lionel Matte, Morgan O’Hara, Tony Orrico, Bhagwati Prasad, Captured Project, Yngvild K. Rolland, Darja Shatalova, Yuya Suzuki, Andreas Töpfer, Patrick Tresset, MONOBLOQUE, Samuel Vanderveken, Victor Wong, Katrin von Lehmann, Bjarni H. Þórarinsson
Softcover, colour.