Julie Mehretu Bücher

American artist Julie Mehretu is celebrated for her large-scale paintings and drawings that layer abstract forms with familiar architectural imagery. Inspired by historical photographs, urban-planning grids, modernist structures and graffiti, these semi-abstract works explore the intersections of power, history, dystopia and the built environment, and their impact on identity formation. This volume marks the exhibition of a new series of works commissioned by Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin. In conjunction with this project, Mehretu established a studio in Berlin where she produced a remarkable suite of paintings that deal with erasure and decay. Addressing what it means to be an American artist in Germany during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars under the Bush administration, Mehretu's canvases meditate on the idea of the modern ruin. Featuring essays by Joan Young and Brian Dillon, this monograph includes a section of photographs tracing the development of the series in the artist's Berlin studio.

Mehretu's evocative compositions in conversation with artists and writers of all stripes, imparting the artist's ongoing commitment to collaboration This catalog is published in conjunction with a major exhibition dedicated to the work of American artist Julie Mehretu (born 1970), spotlighting more than 60 paintings, drawings and prints, from the past 25 years--several of which were painted in the last two. Her sensual and emotional compositions are imbued with palimpsestic and inventive marks that emerge from a dense, multilayered and complex set of references: art historical and sociopolitical, geographical, contemporary and personal. Mehretu's practice has also always engaged in various forms of collaboration and sustained conversation with fellow artists. Fittingly, then, this catalog presents Mehretu's work alongside that of the artists and writers Nairy Baghramian, Huma Bhabha, Robin Coste Lewis, Tacita Dean, David Hammons, Paul Pfeiffer and Jessica Rankin.