Books by Emily Wei Rales

Faith Ringgold

by Faith Ringgold, Katarina Pierre, Emily Wei Rales, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Michele Wallace

"Every one of Ringgold's images tells a story, as often to uplift as critique and almost always in bright, bold and inviting ways." –Bob Morris, New York Times
Lauded internationally for her narrative quilts and her colorful paintings of African American life, New York artist Faith Ringgold has explored and sabotaged perceptions of identity and gender inequality through her experiences in the feminist and civil rights movements.
This catalog is published for her international traveling exhibition organized by the Serpentine, London, which traveled to Bildmuseet, Sweden, in 2020 and opens at Glenstone Museum, Potomac, Maryland, in 2021. Focusing on several series of paintings, story quilts and political posters from the 1960s to today, the book includes two texts by Michele Wallace that interweave Ringgold’s biography with the chronology of works in the exhibition. In an extensive interview, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Ringgold discuss her life in Harlem, the civil rights movement of the 1960s, her inspirations and her passion for storytelling and exercising her freedom of speech. The book also documents the expanded scope of the exhibition at the Glenstone Museum, which includes key examples of Ringgold’s soft sculpture and rare experiments with pure abstraction.
Faith Ringgold (born 1930) is a painter, mixed-media sculptor, performance artist, teacher and writer best known for her narrative quilts. As an avid civil rights and gender equality activist, Ringgold’s work is highly political; in 2020, the New York Times described her as an artist “who has confronted race relations in this country from every angle, led protests to diversify museums decades ago, and even went to jail for an exhibition she organized.” She has had solo shows at Spectrum Gallery (1967), Studio Museum in Harlem (1984) and, most recently, a five-decade retrospective at the Serpentine (2019). Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Brooklyn Museum and the Baltimore Museum of Art, among others.

Michael Heizer

by Emily Wei Rales, Nora Severson Cafritz, Ali Nemerov

American sculptor Michael Heizer (born 1944) was among the first artists to reject the white cube gallery space in favor of the open land and majestic vistas of the western United States. Michael Heizer marks the unveiling of Collapse (1967/2016) and Compression Line (1968/2016) at Glenstone Museum. Monumental in scale but composed with rhythm and elegance, the two sculptures individually embody opposing aspects of Heizer’s sculptural practice: beams exploding from an unseen depth and a sliver of space compressed so precisely that the viewer is unaware of the vast negative area hidden beneath it. This book includes an interview with the artist, previously unpublished archival images and extensive process and installation photography.

Ellsworth Kelly

by Emily Wei Rales, Nora Severson Cafritz, Mia Matthias, Yuri Stone

A spectacular survey of Kelly's seven-decade exploration of abstraction

Accompanying the large-scale traveling exhibition Ellsworth Kelly at 100, this volume celebrates the groundbreaking career of the beloved American abstractionist. This publication highlights key aspects of his multifaceted art--from his lifelong drawing practice through his later explorations of layered canvas panels. Kelly frequently revisited shapes and motifs observed throughout his career, exploring form, color, line and space through painting, sculpture, collage, drawing and photography. The fully illustrated publication highlights works from major public and private collections alongside key works from Glenstone's collection, including seminal early pieces such as Painting for a White Wall (1952) and Painting in Three Panels (1956), as well as examples from the iconic Chatham and Spectrum series. Also featured is Yellow Curve (1990), a monumental floor painting installation that spans nearly 1,000 square feet, on view for the first time in more than 30 years since it was conceived for an exhibition at Portikus am Main in Frankfurt. Essays by Jean-Pierre Criqui, Alex Da Corte, Suzanne Hudson, Corey Keller and others explore and expand upon Kelly's canon. With three gatefolds and a tip-on cover image, the book also includes unpublished archival materials from the artist's studio and the Glenstone archives.
Ellsworth Kelly (1923-2015) was born in Newburgh, New York. His first exhibition was held at the Betty Parsons Gallery in 1956; the Museum of Modern Art, New York, organized his first retrospective in 1973. Subsequent exhibitions have been held at museums including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, Tate in London and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.