Manuel Burgener, Summary

Summary

Manuel Burgener

Publisher
Edition Patrick Frey
Year
2018
ISBN
978-3-906803-68-5
Specifications
Softcover
207 pages
110 colour images
29 x 22 cm
Design by Teo Schifferli
Language: English

SUMMARY by Swiss artist Manuel Burgener is a companion piece to his 2018 Manor Prize show at the Kunsthaus Pasquart in Biel, Switzerland. The idea behind this artist’s book is to undertake a fundamental examination of the purpose of an exhibition catalogue. It asks whether an artwork, especially a sculpture, can be documented at all in the form of a readable depiction. Burgener claims that photographic documentation fails to encompass the ambient space of an exhibition, showing merely the purely formal photographic aspect of that space. Instead of representing the experience of moving through a show, the setting of the camera lens alters the perspective, making it harder to identify an object or an installation. Burgener takes an artistic stance in forgoing conventional documentation of his exhibition and instead giving it an autonomous form of its own within a book. In an attempt to render the very essence of his work rather than showing its placement in space, the four- color offset print is almost entirely covered with a white UV print. In the improvised printing process, the artist added flaws to the white coating to emphasize the overlaid print and to give it a haptic texture. What is highly experimental about this book is that the color shining through the interstices affords us fleeting glimpses of the exhibition itself, even as we simultaneously experience the metaphor of its illegibility.

More from Edition Patrick Frey

Spine Index, an archive of independent photobooks

FIND A
BOOK
/
If you leave this unticked you are logged out when you close the browser, or after 12 hours without activity. Cookies and privacy.
/
one year, or a range like 2015-2020
one or more, separated by commas
full or partial
a name, or design: / text: / edited: / translation: and a name

ARCHIVE

Loading…

PUBLISHER

#

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

V

W

X

Y

Z

ABOUT

The project

SpineIndex is an archive of independent books on photography and visual culture: photobooks, publications, design books and self-published editions — the kind of work that rarely makes it into bookshop windows or mainstream catalogues. It exists to document, connect, and keep visible a world of publishers, artists, and makers who operate outside conventional distribution. A living reference for anyone who takes this territory seriously — collectors, researchers, students, and the simply curious.

Images and rights

Covers, interior pages and descriptions are shown to introduce and identify the books, always crediting publisher, author and photographer and linking back to the publisher. We ask publishers for their permission, and we remove anything on request within 7 days. If you are a publisher, an author or a photographer and you want something changed or removed, write to info@spineindex.it.