In 1967, Peter Roehr and Paul Maenz curated the first German Minimalist exhibition, Serial Formation, at the University of Frankfurt s studio gallery. A total of 48 artists from both America and Germany presented serial-based works ranging from the German Zero movement to American Minimal and Conceptual, Nouveau Réalisme, and Op and Pop art. Celebrating the exhibition s 50th anniversary and in the context of its ongoing Minimalism in Germany exhibition series, Daimler Contemporary, Berlin, restages this historically significant exhibition while expanding on its theme in the exhibition and catalog Serial Formations 1967/2017. The voluminous and well-illustrated publication features a complete facsimile of the long-out-of-print 1967 exhibition catalog, as well as the new and expanded exhibition. Included are 1960 artists from Donald Judd and Agnes Martin to Heinz Mack, artist s statements, and essays from the original two curators, along with contributions from Siegfried Bartels, Nadine Henrich, Daniel Lippitsch, Meredith North, Michaela Filla-Raquin, and Frederik Schikowski and the new show curator, Renate Wiehager.

In their youth, Minimalism’s elemental forms, serial accumulations and industrial materials argued consistently against abstract art’s subjective gestures. Non-relational, non-hierarchical and anti-compositional were the words of the day. Despite all this, Minimalist work was and remains grounded in individual arguments, whether political, formal, art-reflective or purely aesthetic. Minimalism and After displays a broad spectrum of Minimalist work and explores the art world’s continuing Minimalist tendencies from the 1960s to the present day, demonstrating the ways in which Minimal art has been understood and absorbed over decades and by generations. What young international artists might be better understood from the point of view of the history of Minimal art? Images here track the central criteria of Minimalism from today’s perspective: the essentially sculptural presence of the picture-object, coolly geometrical structures, intuitively intelligible order and proportions, works presented so that they relate to the space and the viewer, rejecting a symbolic or narrative nature. Minimalism and After presents about 200 pieces by approximately 100 artists, including established players like Michael Heizer, Dan Graham and Robert Ryman and some of the younger crowd, including Liam Gillick and Michael Zahn. Essays consider national and stylistic contexts.

In recent decades, the border areas between photography and film have emerged as an important field of contemporary photographic art. Well-known practitioners include the American artist Cindy Sherman with her “Film Stills,” a series of black-and-white self-portraits evoking film stills from the 1940s and 1950s both in form and content, and Sam Taylor-Wood, whose photographic panoramas-sometimes more than 30 feet long-forge interpersonal dramas from individual pictures, not unlike unrolled scrolls of film. With works by 40 international artists, this book is the first dedicated to a growing artistic fascination. Based on the observation that at the beginning of the 21st century the history of the moving picture is at an end and yielding fast to the reality of accelerated information, the book bridges the gap between the “classical” position of photography and contemporary work using the Internet and other technologies.

Danish artist Peter Land has mainly exhibited video works over the past seven years, but he has often accompanied them with drawings and photographic works. Land’s work concerns itself with self-exposure: of the body, the person, the artist, and ultimately, society itself. His images demonstrate the tragicomic failures of human attempts to competently, casually, and convincingly in socially determined role–and they address the absurdity, the shattering ridiculousness, the Pagliaccian melancholy that is brought on by the failure of these attempts. The human failures that Land confronts here are shocking, moving, and honest–but they also force the viewer to stand face to face with her condition, to see it, perhaps for the first time, in its naked truth. Peter Land documents some of the highlights of Land’s oeuvre over the past several years, providing a provocative look at his urgent and probing artwork.

Renate Wiehager provides us with the essential pointer regarding the working method of Luca Trevisani by bringing Le Corbusier into play, whose amorphous architectures had been inspired by artefacts found at the boundary between nature and culture. However, Luca Trevisani’s associatively gathered world of forms draws from broader, multi-medial, completely contemporary sources: graphic and product design, cultivation processes, scientific maps, literature, arts and crafts techniques, art history, materials and elements of nature, photographs and materials of the world of fashion. Luca Trevisani subjects this material to a continuous process of reading and re-reading, translation, deconstruction and construction, developing artistic models and objects, which reflect back on their starting material only to perhaps be interpreted again in another direction. Artificially created blue crystals, for instance, resulting from certain chemical reactions, dominate one of the current groups of works. Dried plants, such as corn cobs, partially covered with light reflecting crystals in Yves Klein-blue, turn into haptic and visually attractive, tremendously beautiful, discovered and invented forms from the twilight realm of nature and art. According to Nicolas Bourriaud, this is maintained by a »fluidity of bodies and symbols«, and is thus the result of our »cultural wanderings« and »a mode of resistance against the all too prevalent conformation, and a kind of formal guerrilla«. The beautifully presented volume, designed in accordance with the artist, provides an extensive overview of his work. Luca Trevisani, born 1979 in Verona, now lives in Berlin and Bologna, had recently solo exhibitions at the Museo Marino Marini in Florence, and at the MACRO in Rome.

Minimalism in Germany offers a definitive overview of constructivist and concrete abstraction and the avant-garde in 1960s Germany. With a wealth of color illustrations, this massive and ambitious compendium features approximately 100 works–from serial sculptures to action-oriented works, mostly drawn from the Daimler Art Collection–by around 40 artists. Opening with an examination of predecessors such as Josef Albers, Norbert Kricke, Herbert Zangs and Siegfried Cremer, it looks at developments in abstract art in the cities of Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, Stuttgart, Berlin and Munich, also acknowledging relevant developments in neighboring Switzerland. Among the artists included here are Hartmut Böhm, Imi Giese, Hanne Darboven, Hermann Glöckner, Heinz Mack, Peter Roehr, Charlotte Posenenske, Ulrich Rückriem and Franz Erhard Walther. Essays on minimalist tendencies in German architecture, literature, film and design of the period in Germany expand the context for their activities.

In 1986, on the occasion of the 100th birthday of the automobile, the DaimlerChrysler corporation commissioned pop icon Andy Warhol to do a series about cars. Of the 80 planned pictures, which were to document the history of the automobile using 20 models from 1886 to the present, only 35 pictures and 12 large-format paintings were executed–the last series made by the artist, who died in 1987. This large-format book presents the work in total and, along with other commissioned work, further explores the many-faceted subject of “Business Art.” Robert Longo’s partnership with DaimlerChrysler yielded a series of black-and-white portraits of Mercedes-Benz models; Simone Westwinter created watercolors of the corporation’s persons and products; Mathis Neidhart’s ongoing project takes a dialectical approach to conveying the brand-name philosophy of the company through art-specific questions. Interviews with John Armleder, Jeff Koons, Robert Longo, and Sarah Morris serve to expand on the subject matter.