Description
With a mixture of intellect, humour, and striking design, Joshua Sofaer: Performance | Objects | Participation analyses the artist’s oeuvre in the contexts of liveness, visual art and participatory practices.
Joshua Sofaer works across boundaries, borders and disciplines to create artworks that engage with all levels of society. In cultural institutions or on the street, for art galleries or personal homes, staged as operas or cast as golden sculptures, Sofaer’s work weaves with and through social fabric to consider the ideas that hold us together.
Co-published with Intellect Books for Intellect Live, this lavishly illustrated volume is the first in-depth study of the artist’s work, featuring discussions with producers and participants, documentary images and a new photographic essay, interviews with the artist himself, and thirteen commissioned essays by scholars, curators and artists from the perspectives of performance studies, archaeology and opera criticism. It explores the binding aesthetics of his approach as a model for contemporary practice, and it considers the impact of his work on audiences, institutions and pedagogy, as well as on fine art and performance ecologies as a whole.
The book features specially commissioned photographs by Hugo Glendinning and contributions by Nadia Abdelaziz, Yuan-Liang An, Stuart Andrews, Maddy Costa, Robin Deacon, Konstantina Georgelou, Simon Gould, Sarah Harvey, Yu-Chin Hsiao, Lois Keidan, Yu-Ying Kung, Carl Lavery, Stacy Makishi, Roberta Mock, Mary Paterson, Sibylle Peters, Joanna Sofaer, and Daniel Somerville.
Reviews & Press
Joshua Sofaer is a deeply attentive artist. His multifaceted works are careful, smart, witty and generous. At their heart sits the encounter: with ideas, people, places and objects. I can’t presume to ‘know’ Sofaer, but this gorgeous, layered and richly detailed book – an exquisite collection of documents, discussions and reflections – allows me to encounter him and to relish the unfolding perspectives.
