Panel discussion: “Artists’ Books: The Role of the Publisher”
In conjunction with the exhibition Cahiers d’Art: From Calder to Sugimoto, on 22 February at 11:00 a.m. Ivorypress hosted the panel discussion Artist’s Books: The Role of the Publisher, with the participation of Staffan Ahrenberg, publisher, Cahiers d’Art, Paris, France; Santiago Fernández de Caleya, director, Turner, Mexico City, Mexico; Elena Foster, founder and CEO, Ivorypress, Madrid, Spain and Céline Fribourg, publisher, Take5 Éditions, Geneva, Switzerland.
The panel discussion was moderated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, artistic director of the Serpentine Galleries, London, UK.
Staffan Ahrenberg
Publisher, Cahiers d’Art, Paris, France
Staffan Ahrenberg (1957, Stockholm, Sweden) grew up in Switzerland. Staffan is a Swedish film producer, art collector, and the publisher of Cahiers d’Art, the Paris-based publishing house founded by Christian Zervos in 1926.
Cahiers d’Art is one of the world’s most distinguished publishers of the visual arts, working directly with artists and their estates to create a revue, books, limited editions books and prints, and catalogue raisonnés—each of which is a celebration of the artist’s individual character and vision.
Santiago Fernández de Caleya
Director, Turner, Mexico City, Mexico
Santiago Fernández de Caleya (1965, Spain) began his career in investment banking. After taking part in the foundation of the Morena Films—independent film production Company—in 1998, he took the leap at the editorial world, joining up Turner publishing company as general director. Actually, he spends his time and dedication between Mexico and Madrid.
With more than forty years of experience and three-thousand-published titles, Turner is specialised in illustrated books and art books, as well as in essay and no-fiction collections. Also, the publishing house offers high-quality editorial services to cultural and corporative institutions, as museums and companies in Spain, Mexico, United States and United Kingdom, among others.
Hans Ulrich Obrist
Artistic director of the Serpentine Galleries, London, UK
Hans Ulrich Obrist (1968, Zürich, Switzerland) is the artistic director of the Serpentine Galleries, London, and co-founder of 89plus. Prior to this, he was the Curator of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Since his first show World Soup (The Kitchen Show) in 1991, he has curated more than three hundred exhibitions. His recent publications include Conversations in Mexico, Ways of Curating, The Age of Earthquakes with Douglas Coupland and Shumon Basar, and Lives of the Artists, Lives of the Architects. Obrist has lectured internationally at academic and art institutions, and is a contributing editor to the magazines Artforum, AnOther Magazine, 032C, a regular contributor to Mousse and Kaleidoscope, and he writes columns for Das Magazin and Weltkunst. In 2011, he received the CCS Bard Award for Curatorial Excellence, and in 2015 he was awarded the International Folkwang Prize.
Elena Foster
Founder and CEO, Ivorypress, Madrid, Spain
Elena Ochoa Foster is a publisher and curator. She founded Ivorypress in 1996.
As a patron, she supports a variety of museums and foundations and collaborates with several international schools of contemporary art and photography. She is the Chair of the Council of the Serpentine Galleries in London, and serves as Correspondent Academician in Switzerland for the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid.
Elena Ochoa Foster was a tenured Professor at the Universidad Complutense of Madrid for almost two decades. She was a Fulbright Scholar and researcher in several universities in the United States and Europe.
Céline Fribourg
Publisher, Take5 Éditions, Geneva, Switzerland
Céline Fribourg was born, grew up, and studied in Paris.
She then moved to New York where she spent six years before moving to Geneva (Switzerland) where she currently resides.
Everything in Céline’s trajectory seems to converge towards her passion: art books. Although she studied Economics and Foreign Affairs at Sciences PO, she then turned to Art History at la Sorbonne, did a Master’s degree in Publishing at ESCP, or more recently attended a course on Visual Thinking Strategy, at Harvard University.
Practically, her work experience goes in the same direction. After some training at French publishers Hachette and Gallimard in Paris, Céline worked for a year at Independent Curators Inc. in New York City, on an exhibition of Méret Oppenheim’s work at the Guggenheim Museum.
She then in 1995 created with two partners Éditions Coromandel to publish artists’ books, and then moved on to the creation of Éditions Take5.
Éditions Take5 commissions original works by renowned contemporary artists, writers and designers from different parts of the world, who share a common sensitivity and are eager to collaborate on a specific project within the medium of the book. Original photographs interact with unpublished texts, bold graphic design and traycases created as sculptures and transform the book into a whole new universe.
To this date twenty-three books have been published, that have been acquired for their collections by the most prestigious museums around the world, like MoMA, Centre Pompidou, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, only to name a few, and widely exhibited as well.
If you are interested in attending the panel discussion, please RSVP at opening@ivorypress.com