Pictograms

This new body of work consists of paintings featuring heart-headed figures in various emotional states and situations that sometimes teeter between the ordinary and extraordinary. From tender amorous moments to unexpected skate scenes, the work is full of the next iteration of emotive "schmoo" characters.

Mark Gonzales ("The Gonz") is an American artist and professional skateboarder best known for his profound contribution to the development of street skateboarding from the mid-1980s onward. Gonzales' creative outlook is evident in his ability to perform inventive new tricks using the existing framework of urban architecture like handrails, stairs, and ledges. His artwork grew out of the same environment as his skateboarding and includes illustrating zines, which often have surreal and humorous characters, as well as producing and collaborating on projects with Harmony Korine and Spike Jonze. Born on June 1, 1968 in South Gate, CA, he began skateboarding by the age of 13 and formed the company Blind Skateboards in 1989. While pursuing his sporting career, the artist began drawing in his free time and created graphics for Krooked Skateboards. Since then, he has collaborated with the clothing brand Supreme and Adidas to name just a few. He lives and works in New York.

In 1962 at the age of 71, Joseph Elmer Yoakum (circa 1891–1972) reported having a dream that inspired him to draw. Thereafter the retired veteran began a daily practice and over the next 10 years produced some 2,000 works. 

Yoakum was born into poverty, had very little schooling, and at an early age left home to join a circus. He wound up working with several circuses, traveling across the United States as well as abroad and becoming intimately familiar with the world's various landscapes. These experiences would provide the foundational memories that fueled his deeply spiritual vision decades later. 

When he began to put that vision to paper in his apartment on Chicago's South Side in the early 1960s, Yoakum quickly developed a unique visual language, independent and distinct from other artists in the city, such as those involved in the flourishing Black Arts Movement or the up-and-coming Chicago Imagist group. His drawings—predominantly landscapes in ballpoint pen, colored pencil, pastel, and watercolor and inscribed with locations from all seven continents—reflect the scope of his national and international travels as well as his idiosyncratic and poetic vision of the natural world.

Renowned Japanese photographer Takashi Homma observes his daily life through the poses of his cat.

A cat wanders, perches, and lounges in various spaces around a humble Tokyo apartment. It is perfectly tranquil in its surroundings, simply going about its daily life. In one image, the cat lays serenely amidst pot plants on the balcony, squinting in morning sunlight; in others, it balances precariously on the edge of the bath, snuggles beneath a sleeping bag, plays in a cardboard box, hides beneath an open umbrella. Here and there, evidence of the cat's fellow inhabitant in the apartment—a man, who also happens to be the internationally renowned photographer Takashi Homma—creeps into the frame. A knee, a foot, a shock of blonde hair, half of a face. There are artefacts of his life and practice too. Framed photographic prints draped in bubblewrap lean against a wall; a tangle of musical effects pedals make for colourful constellation against the cool blue of the carpet.

Many have written of the unique atmosphere and energy of Takashi Homma's pictures. His photographic mannerisms are so light, so subtly empathetic to his subjects, that we all but dissolve into the world he creates. The photographs that populate This Is Not My Cat are no exception. Unencumbered by a sense of fussiness or perfection, these images are casual, diaristic, and quotidian. As viewers, we become part of the images and their atmosphere, rather than poring over their details. They are about feeling as much as they are about looking

The title—This Is Not My Cat—seems multipart. Whereas the anomaly imbedded in Homma's iconic photobook Tokyo and My Daughter is that the girl pictured was not in fact his own child, here, his own cat is recast as belonging to another. Or perhaps it is that a cat's independence cannot be truly curbed. They quietly live, play, and exist alongside us. They move through life in our shadow, but forever in their own world. 

Takashi Homma (born 1962, lives and works in Tokyo) is one of the most internationally recognised Japanese photographers active at the front lines of contemporary photography today.

PRESCRIPTIONS is a transcription of a handwritten manuscript, dated to approximately 1650, containing a wide range of medicinal and magical remedies. Currently housed in the Cornell University Witchcraft Collection, it is assumed this practical handbook was a reference for healing, midwifery, and other medical/magical advice. Recipes and instruction cover various methods of purging, ointments for swellings, fevers, and pain reduction, lotions for venereal disease, advice for childbirth, and dilemmas such as “worms in the ear.” Accompanying these medicinal prescriptions are a series of magical prescriptions: charms, rituals, and spells recorded to fortify the ailing body, induce amorous desire, or seek revenge.

With its mix of Latin words, Early Modern English parlance, colloquial plant names, apothecary weights, and archaic medical terms, the recipes can at first appear opaque, but with sustained engagement one can begin to decipher the logics and structures within the writer(s)' shorthand. The original manuscript, in having its own detailed glossary, index, and citations, exhibits a meticulous cataloging of knowledge and resources, and reveals an earnest desire to hold onto the integrity and sanctity of the body in the face of 'many evils.'

The transcription is accompanied by a glossary of terms, an explanation of the various apothecary measurements used, and expanded citations of the medicinal/magical treatises that were abbreviated within the original text.

‘the she’ compares texts by Virginia Woolf with their French translation, reproducing parts of the novelles ‘The String Quartet' & ‘Blue and Green’ and the novel ‘The Years’. Of the novellas, she kept only the articles the in English and le, la, les in French, exactly as they appear in the editions. Of the novel, only the pronouns she in English and elle in French remain.

The publication includes identical two booklets, one bound and one unbound, both uncut, referring to old books which were often sold bound but uncut.

Offset printing. Printed by Cultura, Wetteren

Edition of 123 numbered copies

“RUSTIQUE” is an artist book created by Nicola Godman. This book is sprung out of a residency in September 2021 at Hôtel Chevillon, a former Scandinavian artist colony in Grez-sur-Loing, France. Barbizon, the village where the painter Jean-François Millet (1814–1875) lived and died, is located 20 km away from there. The book interweaves the life and work of Millet with Godman’s photographs, drawings and personal anecdotes.

“RUSTIQUE” wishes to put forward the artistic gaze towards rural life by artists who themselves are born peasants. Nicola Godman (b. 1989, Rute) is an artist working with photography, video, books and stories, currently based in Stockholm, Sweden. Having grown up on an organic dairy farm, she is researching depictions of rural life in art history and contemporary culture.

Fugue is published on the occasion of the eponymous duo exhibition by artists Aaron Amar Bhamra and Céline Mathieu, presented at Jester in Genk, Belgium. The title, derived from the Latin fuga (flight), evokes both its musical and psychological meanings: a contrapuntal compositional technique and a state of dissociation. These dual connotations—aural and mental—resonate throughout the exhibition and this accompanying publication.

Céline Mathieu's work moves between the sensory and the conceptual, integrating multiple media to explore the circulation of thoughts and materials in relation to specific sites. Aaron Amar Bhamra's practice draws on recurring forms and materials to construct evolving personal and social archives, often reactivating exhibition spaces by engaging with their historical contexts.

In addition to documenting the exhibition, the publication features an introduction by Jester's artistic director Koi Persyn, a visual score of a sound composition by Charlie Usher, written contributions by Céline Mathieu, curator Eloise Sweetman, and researcher Johanna Schindler, as well as a series of analog photographs by Aaron Amar Bhamra.

Contributions by Koi Persyn, Céline Mathieu, Charlie Usher, Eloise Sweetman, Johanna Schindler, Aaron Amar Bhamra.

Austrian artist Aaron Amar Bhamra (born 1992) often procures exhibition spaces that subtly expose their systematics and physical experience by incorporating imprints reminiscent of other spaces or past exhibitions. He occasionally uses recurring forms and materials, weaving a site of shifting personal and social archives.

Céline Mathieu (born 1989) is a Belgian artist and writer. Her practice is often site and condition specific, using sound, scent, sculpture, performance, text and different materials in performative installations. The work is both sensory and conceptual. Her work looks into the circulation of thoughts and materials. Material and economic cycles merge with hyper-personal items, resulting in fluid work that cannot quite be pinned down.

Sasha Phyars-Burgess’ first monograph, Untitled. Spanning three bodies of work, this 200-plus page monograph includes poems by Ser Alida and Aurora Masum-Javed, a conversation between Sasha Phyars-Burgess, Juliana Huxtable and Carolyn Lazard, and essay by Bill Gaskins. Designed by Studio Lin.

As recipient of the second annual Capricious Photo Award, Sasha is a vital, emerging voice in contemporary photography, engaging the charged line between documentary and fine art. Her work ranges from affecting studies on diaspora, family and place to revolving social phenomenons in which energy, beauty and power meet.

The second annual jury panel was helmed by Capricious Founder and Publisher Sophie Mörner and Associate Publisher Anika Sabin alongside Lauren Cornell, Katherine Hubbard, JOFF, Matt Keegan, Guadalupe Rosales, Ka-Man Tse, and Lyndsy Welgos.