This Saturday, August 13th between 4:00 and 6:00 PM, renowned gallerist Peter Fetterman will engage in a lively discussion here with Arcana owner Lee Kaplan regarding his career, his love of the photographic medium, and Peter's lovely and thought-provoking new book, The Power of Photography.

If you cannot attend but would like to purchase a book signed by Peter Fetterman please place your order here or call us at 310-458-1499.

The power of photography lies in its ability to ignite emotions across barriers of language and culture. This selection of iconic images, compiled by pioneering collector and gallerist Peter Fetterman, celebrates the photograph’s unique capacity for sensibility. Mr. Fetterman runs one of the leading commercial galleries in the world, and has championed the photographic arts for over thirty years. During the long months of lockdown, he ‘exhibited’ one photograph per day, accompanied by inspirational text, quotes and poetry. This digital collection struck a chord with followers from around the world. The Power of Photography presents one hundred and twenty outstanding images from the series along with Peter’s insightful words. This carefully curated selection offers an inspiring overview of the medium while paying homage to masters of the art. From the bizarre Boschian fantasies of Melvin Sokolsky to the haunting humanity of Ansel Adams’ family portraits; from Miho Kajioka’s interpretation of traditional Japanese aesthetics of to the joyful everyday scenes of Evelyn Hofer; from rare interior shots by famed nude photographer Ruth Bernhard to Bruce Davidson’s wistful depiction of young men playing ballgames on a street; this book gathers some of the most unique and heartening photographs from the 20th century. Each image is a time capsule, offering us a glimpse into days gone past. Yet each photograph also speaks of tranquility, peace, and hope for the future."

PLEASE JOIN US THIS SATURDAY,
JULY 30th, 4:00 - 6:00 PM
FOR A BOOK SIGNING + DISCUSSION

THE STEVE KEENE ART BOOK!
 

Join us Saturday, July 30th between 4:00 and 6:00 PM celebrate the launch of The Steve Keene Art Book, co-published by our friends at Hat & Beard Press. Hat & Beard Editor and Publisher J.C. Gabel will host a lively discussion of Steve Keene's work with the artist himself, in conversation with Daniel Efram, the producer of the Steve Keene Art Book, and the co-host of the 30-year retrospective of Keene's work, up at Palm Grove Social through September 1, 2022.

If you cannot attend but would like to purchase a book signed by Steve Keene and Daniel Efram, please place your order here or call us at 310-458-1499.

Steve Keene is the most prolific American painter of all time, producing more than 300,000 hand-painted works via his studio / chainlink fence cage where he paints more than fifty paintings at a time. Lovingly known for making affordable art, as well as being the indie rock cover art maker to Pavement, The Apples in stereo, and Silver Jews, Keene has long been under-appreciated for his importance to the nineties indie art and music scenes. The Steve Keene Art Book - originally conceived during his sold out 2016 show at Shepard Fairey’s Subliminal Projects Gallery - is the first art book dedicated exclusively to his work.

The book features essays by musician Hilarie Bratset (The Apples in stereo), writer Sam Brumbaugh, Elle Chang, Daniel Efram, Shepard Fairey, journalist Karen Loew, and Christina Zafiris, along with comments from Starling Keene, curators Jonathan LeVine, Leo Fitzgerald and Talia Logan, alongside a dazzling two hundred and seventy-seven reproductions of Keene’s works. Efram takes readers into Keene’s utilitarian chainlink “painting cage” for an all-access pass for a peek into the artist’s fascinating systemic technique. The Steve Keene Art Book is co-published by Hat & Beard Press and Tractor Beam and has been made possible through a crowdfunding campaign that included hundreds of supporters - from Keene's former hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia, to fans from all over the world - who contributed pieces from their own personal collections. It is produced by Daniel Efram, edited by Gail O’Hara, editor-in-chief of the “legendary indie nerd bible” chickfactor, and designed by Grammy-nominated graphic designer Henry Owings.

4:00 - 6:00 PM FOR A BOOK SIGNING

JOHN DIVOLA: SCAPES

Please join us Sunday, July 24th between 4:00 and 6:00 PM celebrate the arrival of Mr. Divola's stunning new Skinnerboox publication. If you cannot attend but would like to purchase a signed copy, please place your order here or call us at 310-458-1499.

"Cameras and their users are caught between the universal and the particular. Photography and photographs; humanity and whatever specific kind of human we happen to be. There is at least something existentially universal about John Divola’s photographic adventures. The lone observer moving through the world and reflecting upon it through various camera possibilities. But nobody is truly universal, or only universal. We each come wrapped in our particulars, just as each and every photograph belongs to the universe of photography precisely insofar as it is particular. Forever the two. When I look at Divola’s photographs, I sense something universal because I sense all the particulars. Yes, a white, male, middle class Southern Californian, post-conceptual artist of the kind that makes these kinds of photographs. But nobody makes photographs quite like Divola. He is one of a kind, and therein are the universal and the particular." - David Campany from his text for "SCAPES", which contains selections from three of the photographer's most celebrated bodies of early black and white work, "Four Landscapes", "As Far As I Could Get", and "Dogs Chasing My Car in the Desert."

For most people in the West, the realities of life behind the Iron Curtain have faded into caricatures of police state repression and bread lines. With the world seemingly again divided between democracies and authoritarian regimes, it is essential that we understand the reality of life in the Soviet Bloc. noted American photojournalist Arthur Grace was uniquely placed to provide that context.

During the 1970s and 1980s Grace traveled extensively behind the Iron Curtain, working primarily for news magazines. One of only a small corps of Western photographers with ongoing access, he was able to delve into the most ordinary corners of people’s daily lives, while also covering significant events. Many of the photographs in this remarkable book are effectively psychological portraits that leave the viewer with a sense of the gamut of emotions in that era.

Illustrated with over one hundred and twenty black-and-white images - nearly all previously unpublished, Communism(s) gives an unprecedented glimpse behind the veil of a not-so-distant time filled with harsh realities unseen by nearly all but those that lived through it. Shot in the USSR, Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia and the German Democratic Republic, here are portraits of factory workers, farmers, churchgoers, vacationers and loitering teens juxtaposed with the GDR’s imposing Social Realist-designed apartment blocks, annual May Day Parades, Poland’s Solidarity movement (and the subsequent imposition of martial law) and the vastness of Moscow’s Red Square.

Beautifully printed in Italy by publisher Damiani Editore, Communism(s) was co-edited by Arthur Grace, Arcana's own Lee Kaplan, and Deadbeat Club Press' Clint Woodside, who also contributed the book's striking design. Read some of its impressive advance reviews from The New York Times, Washington Post, and The Sunday London Times, and join us Saturday, June 11th to acquire your own copy of this timely document signed by photographer Arthur Grace

If you cannot attend, place an order here for your very own copy of Communism(s) signed by Arthur Grace to be picked up at the store or shipped to you after the event.
● Purchase ● 

PLEASE JOIN US SATURDAY, MARCH 19th, 4:00 - 6:00 PM FOR A BOOK SIGNING 

RICHARD MISRACH: NOTATIONS

If you cannot attend, you may order signed copy of the book to be picked up at the store or shipped to you after the event: please place your order here.  Since 2006, coinciding with his shift away from analog film to working exclusively with a digital camera, Richard Misrach has been exploring the aesthetic possibilities of the negative image. His latest body of work, debuted in this deluxe, oversize (16.75 by 13 inches), landscape-format volume, comprises dazzling, sublime photographs of landscapes and natural scenes—in negative, but using color with great dexterity and nuance.

Inspired by Ansel Adams’ comparison of the photographic negative to a musical score, and John Cage’s 1969 book, Notations, which compiles music scores as art, Misrach here envisages the photographic image as a score-like negative, teetering on abstraction, that invites a diversity of interpretations. The result is a series of immense beauty unlike any previous Misrach publication. Published by Radius Books; text by Darius Himes.

Richard Misrach  is one of the most influential photographers working today. For the past five decades, he has used visually stunning, large-scale color vistas to address human intervention in the natural world. He lives and works in Berkeley, California.