STRAU, Josef; BIRKENSTOCK, Eva (ed.)
Josef Strau: Spirits & Objects ... and How Non-Productive Love Is Sometimes Contained in Them ...

… In the texts I wanted to follow not so much the connection between artistic possession and evil or sleazy misdemeanors, or the ways for how to try to redeem them in older age, but just to concentrate on the moments when such vices entered my subjectivity and found for sure  very good soil for it, possibly.
I apologize as well that such surveys or evidences of the origin of my evils comes with monotonously expressing the very masculine sides of the self and comes with my obvious use of traditionanl language and traditions of male self-description as well. … 
— excerpt from, “Like before all the exhibitions.”

Published in the aftermath of Josef Strau’s eponymous at Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf, in 2020, this book gathers all texts written by the artist between 2005 and 2020, including the famous and incontournable “The Non-Productive Attitude,” but also, “Lamp Memoirs” or “Turtle Dreaming.” Avis aux amateurs. 

The book opens with a foreword by Eva Birkenstock, curator of the 2020 show, and ends with exhibition views – notably documenting the installation of videos by Keren Cytter, Bernadette Van-Huy, and Enzo Shalom, that were adapted from short passages of text by Strau, which his New York friends.

Published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König / Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen Düsseldorf, 2022
Design by Petra Hollenbach
Exhibition Catalogues / Artists' Writings