Heribert C. Ottersbach: Erziehung zur Abstraktion / Formation to Abstraction. Die Architekturbilder / Paintings on Architecture

Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2008. First edition. Hardcover. vg. Folio. 176pp. Original illustrated dust-jacket over paper covered boards. Remarkable catalogue published on the occasion of an exhibition held at the Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt, May 11-Sept. 7, 2008 to commemorate Heribert C. Ottersbach's work. Includes a short story written by the artist. "German painter Heribert C. Ottersbach seeks nothing less than a re-evaluation of the modern era in his art. Ottersbach develops his visual ideas using found materials and his own drawings. This publication features architectural subjects and essays by Ralf Beil, Kai-Uwe Hemken, and Carola Kemme, as well as philosophical and literary source texts from Michel Foucault, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Fernando Pessoa. Ottersbach's depictions of architecture sometimes have ironic, sarcastic titles, such as Modernism as Sanatorium while Perpetuating Gothic Principles (1999) or The New School of Athens (2002). Clearly referring to his fundamentally critical attitude toward modernism and its manifestations, the artist's distanced, critical visual language plumbs the depths of modernism's Utopian content, as well as ways it has caused the loss of sensory perception." (From the publisher). Text in English and German. Book is brand new and has never been opened (still in shrinkwrap).