This comprehensive survey of Tacita Dean's drawings, prints, collages, and objects directly drawn, marked, or altered by her adroit hand reflects the importance of graphic touch in the artist's work.

Base Matter and Uncommon Solvent is an overdue comprehensive survey of drawings, prints, collages, and objects that are directly drawn, marked, or altered by Tacita Dean. The chosen works differentiate from those made using mechanical reproduction, such as photographs, purely image-based etching and screenprints, and her 16mm and 35mm films.

The careful collation of works in the book, including many early or previously unseen images, show the importance of the graphic touch in Dean's work. The volume includes an essay by the artist highlighting her use of various substrates and materials where she questions why she has historically found it so difficult to make drawings on simple pieces of paper. The title is derived from the language of alchemy and was first referenced by Dean in her early photogravure T & I (2006). 'Base matter' represents here the various surfaces she works upon and 'uncommon solvent' the mediums she has used to make a mark.

This luxurious volume is co-edited and designed with her long-term friend and collaborator Martyn Ridgewell and is timed to coincide with 'Tacita Dean: Blind Folly', the first major exhibition in the United States to focus on her drawings at The Menil Collection, Houston, 11 October 2024-19 April 2025.

Details

ISBN13: 9781915743527
Format: Hardback
Number of Pages: 624
Edition:
Publication Date:
Publisher: MACK
Publication City, Country: London, United Kingdom
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Author Biography

Tacita Dean (b. 1965, Canterbury) is a British European artist living and working in Berlin and Los Angeles. She has been the recipient of numerous prizes including the Schwitters Prize in 2009, the Hugo Boss Prize at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, in 2006, and the Sixth Benesse Prize at the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005. Solo exhibitions were recently held in 2023 at the Bourse de Commerce, Pinault Collection, Paris, and Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, and in 2022 at MUDAM, Luxembourg and The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. In 2018, a trilogy of solo exhibitions, 'LANDSCAPE', 'PORTRAIT', 'STILL LIFE', was held simultaneously at the National Portrait Gallery, the National Gallery, and the Royal Academy of Arts in London. In 2021, she designed the sets and costumes for the ballet The Dante Project, a collaborative production with Wayne McGregor and Thomas Ades, which premiered at the Royal Opera House in London. In 2011, Dean's work FILM, shown in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, marked the beginning of a campaign to preserve photochemical film.

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