Mai Thu Perret

_______________________ A DRAMATIC FICTIONAL PORTRAIT OF THE US-MEXICO BORDER, MIGRATION, AND ITS IMPACT ON PEOPLE'S LIVES _______________________ Through this network of nine personal stories, Carlos Fuentes sets out to explain Mexico and America to each other – and to the rest of the world. He presents a dramatic fictional portrait of the relationship between the United States and Mexico, as played out in a Mexican dynasty led by a powerful Mexican oligarch with complex ties north of the border. It is the story of Mexican families who send their sons north to provide for whole villages with dollars and of Mexican tycoons who exploit their own people. Young Jose Francisco grows up in Texas, determined to write about the border world – the immigrants and illegals, Mexican poverty and Yankee prosperity – stories to break the stand-off silence with a victory shout, to shatter at last the crystal frontier.

Mai-Thu Perret examines the relentless movement of capitalism as it absorbs and defeats what were once revolutionary forms, focusing on the aestheticization of historical avant-gardes to reflect the changing realities of utopian thinking. Her major ongoing project, "The Crystal Frontier," begun in 1999, comprises fictional diary entries and letters written by a group of disillusioned women exiled in the New Mexico desert, as well as myriad artworks that Perret describes as their "hypothetical products." Born in 1975 in Geneva, where she lives and works, Perret studied at Cambridge University and the Whitney Independent Study Program, New York. This comprehensive artist's book, Perret's first monograph, includes a selection of her writings and a specially designed collage of references. Perret's work has recently been seen at The Renaissance Society in Chicago.

Mai-Thu Perret (*1976 in Geneva, where she lives and works) studied at Cambridge University and the Whitney Independent Study Program, New York. The first body of works she developed is entitled "The Crystal Frontier" (1999-): a series that comprises text and objects, which she describes as either the hypothetical production of a group of women living in autarchy in the desert of New Mexico, or the materialization of the principles that shape their everyday life. Investigating our relationships to common objects found in contemporary art, design spaces, and everyday shops, the artist engages with the consequences and changing realities of utopian thinking as it becomes incorporated into capitalism's mainstream. The book includes most of her projects so far, introduced by short captions she has written, as well as newly commissioned essays by Elisabeth Lebovici and Diedrich Diederichsen. In 2010-2011 Mai-Thu Perret had solo exhibitions at UMMA in Ann Arbor, the Aargauer Kunsthaus in Aarau, the Mamco in Geneva, the Haus Konstruktiv in Zurich, and the Magasin in Grenoble. Publisher's note.

"Opening with a catalogue section that documents the nine selected historical and contemporary exhibitions, the publication also contains an anthology of more than forty texts, many published here for the first time, as well as contributions by artists created especially for this volume." --Book Jacket.

The first major monograph dedicated to the work of the internationally acclaimed abstract painter.

In this new artist's book, Valentin Carron presents a series of collages mixing recent sculptures, details of backgrounds, and PhotoShop effects, all specially realized to be printed in this volume.If Carron's sculptures mark a renewal of appropriation through the re-employment of vernacular forms that are not part of the dominant culture, the artist develops a project confusing genres: neither authentic nor kitsch, neither readymade nor really craft, his objects play with ambiguity (fake wood, fake concrete, fake bronze, etc.) and with an iconography of power and authority (public sculptures or commemorative monuments, traditional forms, etc.).This book reflects his sculptural practice in the two-dimensionality of the page and the space of printed matter. Designed by Gavillet & Rust, it includes a contribution by the writer Julien Maret and is published on the occasion of Valentin Carron's Swiss Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale 2013.English and French text.

This volume compiles ideas and projects from well-known artists, architects, designers, filmmakers and researchers on mountainous regions not only in Switzerland, but worldwide. It includes writings by Vito Acconci, Doug Aitken, Ron Arad, Nairy Baghramian and Jan von Brevern, as well as a discussion on architect Bruno Taut's "Crystal Chain Letters."