Author Description

Danish painter, poet, filmmaker, architect, and sculptor Per Kirkeby is one of Scandinavias most celebrated living artists. His engagement with natural and geologic processes is highlighted in this beautiful new exhibition catalog from Kunsthalle Giessen featuring photographs of his brick sculpture Gieen (1996) and large-scale charcoal drawings relating to in a series titled Masonites (197797). Earlier works are also featured including tempera paintings, bronze models, drawings, and several intensely colored monotypes. The sculpture, created to connect two building complexes at Justus Leibig University, stands as built metaphor of Kirkebys career-long focus on natures processes from sediment to culture. This excellent look into Kirkebys work, which has appeared at Documenta and in the collections of the Tate Modern, Phillips Collection, MOMA, NY and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, includes beautiful color plates and essays by Ute Riese and Marcel Baumgartner on the artists processes and ideas.