Tag: Searching For Sebald

Mind the Gap Exhibition at Kent Gallery

A clandestine photograph of TRANSIT co-founder Evelyn Farny as she performs the world premiere of “Panorama” by composer Angélica Negrón on Thursday, February 2, 2012 at Kent Gallery in New York City. She also performed pieces by Alexandra Gardner, Caroline Shaw, and György Ligeti.

The works by Hans Haacke and Charles Gaines on the walls behind her are part of “Mind the Gap,” a Kent Gallery exhibition inspired by the ICI’s book Searching for Sebald with works that ‘operate between and within signs in order to discover, tease out, and make manifest meaning that is neither obvious nor orthodox.’ The Gaines piece (right) draws its inspiration from Georges Bataille, the subject of the ICI’s first full-length publication. These ‘Sebaldian’ moments no longer surprise us.  But we were inspired by the full-length exhibition catalog produced solely for the internet. We applaud this impulse to remove commodity from acts of thought.

The exhibition, which includes work by Joseph Beuys, Walid Raad, Mark Lombardi, Alfredo Jaar, Heide Fasnacht and others, runs until February 25, 2012

What the Critics Are Saying about SFS

“Sebald’s gray snapshots…seem to suggest an especially acute sense of the present relation of word and image. Where they pointed, argues Patt persuasively in her introduction toSearching for Sebald, was precisely toward the practices of certain contemporary artists.”
—Brian Dillon, Aperture, Summer 2008

“Among the most valuable recent studies [of Sebald]…. The impressive Searching for Sebald is a large-format book containing essays illustrated with countless photographs and an unpublished interview…. Searching for Sebald discusses key issues in his work in an unprecedented way: the relationship of Sebald to the virtues of photocopying; photography in the midst of writing, not as the shipwreck of the literary but as an accomplice of its insecurities, calling into question the documentary features of images…”
—translated from Matias Serra Bradford, Perfil, January 2008

“[Searching for Sebald] is beautifully designed, printed, and bound to the highest standards, and reproduces visual material with exemplary clarity that puts the reproductions in other books on Sebald to shame…. The volume opens with Lise Patt’s astonishing 80-page introduction… [which includes] an extremely detailed and valuable comparison of the changes in layout in the various German and English editions of Sebald’s work.”
—Jonathan Long, Source, Spring 2008

“…a tribute to the writer’s engagement with the semiotics of images and his wide scope of influence especially in the visual arts…. a richly generous book for literary scholars, visual artists and all readers of Sebald…”
—Evelyn Juers, Australian Literary Review, May 2008

“…meticulously and beautifully produced…”
—Megan Ratner, Art on Paper, May/June 2008

“I’ve read a great deal of Sebald criticism, but this is the first collection that attempts to analyze Sebald’s aesthetic while reproducing aspects of that aesthetic.
It is simply a gorgeous book…” [more]
—Bev, Excelsior blog, June 2008

“It is an incredible edition of over 600 pages of original criticism and artwork.” [more]
—Attic Fantasist blog, November 2007