Altered Secession catalogs

Brian Kennon

Made for Kennon's 2011 exhibition Get In at ltd los angeles, these books are altered facsimiles of catalogs from the Vienna Secession. Secession - Christopher Wool (Josh Smith) takes the 2001 Wool catalog and adds on top of it images of Josh Smith paintings taken from Smith's massive archival website. Secession- Christopher Wool (Polaroids) takes the same 2001 catalog, which reproduces a series of polaroids Wool took of his paintings, and swaps a selection of them for polaroids (mostly of nudes) found online. Secession - Michael Krebber is a collaboration between Brian Kennon and Darren Bader. For it, Kennon took the 2005 Krebber catalog and added images based on a Google image search instigated by Bader.

All three books are self-published in an undefined edition.

Brian Kennon Secession - Christopher Wool (Josh Smith) 11.75 x 8" 48 pages $30	Brian Kennon Secession - Christopher Wool (Polaroids) 11.75 x 8" 48 pages $30	Brian Kennon & Darren Bader Secession - Michael Krebber 11.75 x 8" 60 pages $30	All three books $70.00

Get In

Andrew Berardini & Brian Kennon

Holding the place of a catalog for Kennon's exhibition of the same name, Get In is a collaboration by Andrew Berardini and Brian Kennon. Instead of documenting the exhibition for which it was created, the book documents two series of works by Kennon, only one of which was in the show. The first series, also titled Get In, are studio photographs of the bottoms of 70's era Penthouse magazines, each inserted in the next to create a single, fleshy form. The second series are a selection of advertisements taken from those magazines which where then framed in matching frames, in the style of Elad Lassry. Andrew Berardini wrote an accompanying text, a short fiction telling the story of a people who lost their ability to read the texts of their cultural archive and a group of priestesses who re-imagine that archive through song.

Catalog of the Exhibition 1984-2011

Bob Nickas

This book brings together new texts written to accompany 79 exhibitions organized by Bob Nickas between 1984 and 2011. Nickas chose one work to represent the memory of each exhibition, and through this visual "lens" he reflects on his activity as a curator, offering many behind-the-scenes views to the art world of the 1980s and 90s, as well as intimate recollections of the artists he worked with, and the art works he encountered over the years. The book, then, can be seen as a sort of memoir. Always placing the artists and their works within a social milieu, while also aware of how art travels across time, he reminds us that both lead multiple lives, as an exhibition can reanimate a work from the past, and occasion the discovery of forgotten and marginalized figures among those who are very well-known. This retrospective catalog is also in many ways an ideal exhibition — or collection — 27 years in the making.

With 90 color and black-and-white reproductions, the book features works by:

Vito Acconci . Richard Aldrich . John M Armleder . Barry X Ball . Lisa Beck . Alan Belcher . Ben Berlow . Walead Beshty . Huma Bhabha . Doug Biggert . Marcel Broodthaers . Henri Cartier Bresson . Graham Caldwell . Vija Celmins . Art Chantry . Larry Clark . Verne Dawson . Jules de Balincourt . Jessica Diamond . Trisha Donnelly . Moira Dryer . Gardar Eide Einarsson . William Gedney . Robert Gober . Daan van Golden . Wayne Gonzales . Felix Gonzalez-Torres . Peter Halley . Richard Hawkins . Adam Helms . Eva Hesse . Peter Hujar . Jacob Kassay . On Kawara . Yves Klein . Louise Lawler . Mark Leckey . Sherrie Levine . Judy Linn . Lee Lozano . Chris Martin . Allan McCollum . McDermott & McGough . Adam McEwen . Ryan McGinley . John Miller . Olivier Mosset . Dave Muller . Chuck Nanney . Bruce Nauman . Cady Noland . Amy O'Neill . Steven Parrino . Laurie Parsons . Raymond Pettibon . Jean Prouvé . David Ratcliff . Alex Rose . Sally Ross . Allen Ruppersberg . Sam Samore . Tom Sandberg . Joan Semmel . Stephen Shore . Harry Smith . Jack Smith . Robert Smithson . Mark Stahl. Haim Steinbach. Rudolf Stingel . Lily van der Stokker . Aaron Suggs . Philip Taaffe . Paul Thek . Wolfgang Tillmans . Betty Tompkins . Josh Tonsfeldt . John Tremblay . Alan Uglow . Kelley Walker . Jeff Wall . Joan Wallace . Wallace & Donohue . Dan Walsh . Andy Warhol . Christopher Wool

Believe You Me

Ry Rocklen

Believe You Me is an artists' book that corresponds with Rocklen's 2011 exhibition of the same name. For the "book version of the exhibition," Rocklen had photographer Lee Thompson photograph the raw materials he would then use to construct his sculptures (thrift store acquired trophies, posters, t-shirts, paintings and a found telephone book). Rocklen then used those photographs as the source material for the book. Essentially a series of hyper-detail images of the works in the exhibition, Believe You Me collages the photographs into full-bleed spreads that have been loosely organized around a set of scanned telephone book pages and which function as the book's chapters (Hair-Handwriting, Ice-Immigration, Religious-Remodeling, etc).

In order to keep the book entirely comprised of photographs, Believe You Me's title page, colophon page, and spine are photographs of a black t-shirt silkscreened specifically for the book. The t-shirt, printed in an edition of 10 on American Apparel shirts, comes with the signed/numbered limited edition of the book, also in an edition of 10. $100. Please contact orders@2ndcannons.com for more info.

Trisha Donnelly Mixtape

Matthew Grover

Pretty please don’t call her Stella. I call her †. And she was mos definitely grooving. And † never lost her groove. Instead, she switches moves-- she keeps her style in check. Checkin it is different than being in style. No trend-following for her. Get in check-- get this right: † is a trendsetter. † Dougies.

So while I get ready to say my thanks, I must first apologize to the art heads who just aren’t gonna get this because it’s neither blanketed by-- nor directed toward-- Trisha Donnelly as the subject. Sorry!

But so what? Trisha D just ain’t the subject all the fucking time. Be easy.

Trisha D turned into a symbol, like Prince did. Just keep † in mind. Keep † in check, ya dig?

Matthew Grover's Trisha Donnelly Mixtape is composed of anecdotes, dance moves, journalism, nicknames, raps, and typography. Through topics as diverse as the 2009 Los Angeles Station Fire, Color Coordination, Doug E Fresh, and Ice-T, Grover pleads for readers to wise up about such a curious subject as Trisha Donnelly.

Budget Decadence

Christopher Russell

Christopher Russell's small-novel, Budget Decadence, uses a non-event-based style of fiction to explore commodity as an aspect of Middle American psychology. The book looks back to the J.K. Huysmans novel, A Rebours, and unfolds the deep psychological malaise of the nuclear family based on the various characters' understanding of, and interaction with, the curated collection of common objects that comprise each character's identity.

Russell uses the text from his recent solo exhibition at The Hammer Museum. He mixes his writing and photographs with collages of engravings that comprise a devotional book, an ode to the dark and self destructive fantasies of Middle America.

The deluxe edition of Budget Decadence includes an archival inkjet print entitled Decorate Your Room Kit, an 8x10" photograph of an empty room with detachable instructions for defacing/co-authoring the work. Signed/numbered edition of 10.-Deluxe edition soldout

Forest

Brian Kennon

Authored in 2007 as part of Kennon's exhibition "Long Live Rock 'N' Roll/Richard Hawkins Decapitated Head" at Daniel Hug gallery in Los Angeles, Forest is a three volume set that reprints two bodies of work (Hawkins' and Martin's) and accompanies them with a third volume. The publication of Forest caps off a series of works (2005-2007) in which Kennon uses the theme of the forest, as understood through the aesthetics of Metal, to suggest a parallel context for Richard Hawkins' Disembodied Zombie works.

The three books are: Forest, a book of forest images collected from the internet; Richard Hawkins, Disembodied Zombies, 1997, a catalog of 7 digital works of severed, floating heads by Richard Hawkins; and Agnes Martin Untitled #1-10, 1990 which reprints a suite of 10 grid-based drawings by Agnes Martin.

The deluxe edition of Forest is printed with a different color on the sleeve. Signed/numbered edition of 10. $100. Contact orders@2ndcannons.com for more info.

ISBN-10: 0-9820559-3-5

Brendan Fowler

In spring 2008, Barr (Brendan Fowler) cancelled his planned summer tour and began making objects. Since then, Fowler has shown works with Rivington Arms, 2nd Cannons and Mesler&Hug. For this book, Fowler used a camera and photocopier to assemble a catalog (a self-retrospetive?) of this year of object-making.

She Has a Hot Ass

Darren Bader, Brian Kennon, Chris Lipomi

A 3 person artists' book made on the occasion of Kennon and Lipomi's 2 person show at Mesler&Hug in New York. She Has a Hot Ass combines a collection of the magazine spreads that generated Kennon's photographs and prints for the exhibtion, digitally produced collages that run parallel to Lipomi's paintings and additional texts and images by Bader. Images from the exhibition here.

A signed/numbered edition of 10 also available for $150. Contact orders@2ndcannons.com for more info.

2nd Cannons Publications 017
2009, 1st printing, edition of 500.
8.5x6" 94 pages $30.00

Heliogabalus

William E. Jones

The third release in a series of books by William E. Jones, Heliogabalus pays tribute to the most decadent Roman Emperor. Who was this creature who called himself Elagabalus, after El Gabal, god of the sun? What to make of his addiction to luxury, his overbearing mother, his controversial genitals? Enlightening texts can be found in the latest 2nd Cannons publication. The book features accounts of Heliogabalus by Edward Gibbon, Herodian, Cassius Dio, and the spurious Aelius Lampridius. It also contains a contemporary text, “This Necrophilic Strategy Entails Some Risk,” a collaboration by Bruce Hainley and William E. Jones, previously published only in expurgated form, and now presented with all lurid details intact.

Varius Avitus Bassanius, later known in his infamy as Heliogabalus, ruled Rome from 218 to 222 of the Common Era. After he was murdered by the soldiers who had formerly supported him, his successor, Alexander Severus, ordered that all sculptures of Heliogabalus be desecrated. The iconoclasm directed against Heliogabalus was so nearly complete that very few portraits of him still exist. William E. Jones has somewhat opportunistically dealt with the paucity of images of this imperial person by inserting advertisements from a bygone era at intervals in Heliogabalus. These advertisements, and the book’s design in general, derive from the pages of that avatar of 1970s urban culture, After Dark.

2nd Cannons Publications 016
2009, 1st printing, edition of 500. 11x8.5" 43 pages $18.00

Champion Zero

Flora Wiegmann and Drew Heitzler

Champion Fine Art was initiated in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in September of 2003 by Drew Heitzler and Flora Wiegmann as an artists’ space that would host twenty-one exhibitions over a period of two years. The space operated in a third floor loft at 281 N. 7th St. until August of 2004, when Drew and Flora moved to California. Champion re-opened a month later in the Culver City section of Los Angeles on the ground floor of a two-story apartment at 6073 Comey Avenue, where it operated until the completion of the project in November, 2005.

For each exhibition, the gallery would produce a desk-top published, zine-style catalog in an edition of 100. Those small books were distributed freely to gallery visitors. The page spreads that made up those catalogs now make up this book, Champion Zero.

Participating artists include: Drew Heitzler, Mai-thu Perret, Steven Parrino, Bettina Funcke, Seth Price, Kelly Walker, Monique Van Genederen, Emily Sunblad, Josh Smith, Gardar Eide Einarsson, Roe Ethridge, Shana Lutker, Jonas Wood, Matt Johnson, Scott Reeder, Tyson Reeder, Katherine Bernhardt, Brian Bress, Fia Backström, John Tremblay, James Welling, Eric Wesley, Steven Shore, Alice Konitz, Skylard Haskard, Carter Mull.

With texts by: Charles Baudelaire, Steven Parrino, Kim Gordon, Jutta Koether, Carissa Rodriguez, Jonal Nobel, Petter Kallioinen, Elizabeth Bernhardt, Sophie Carr, John Tremblay, Walead Beshty, Anna Sew Hoy, Michael Zahn.

2nd Cannons Publications 015
2008, 1st printing, edition of 500. $60.00

Selections from the Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

William E. Jones

Selections from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton telescopes 350 years, the period from the 1620s to the 1970s. It is what artist William E. Jones imagined Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy would have looked like had it appeared in the pages of Drummer magazine. In preparing the book, Jones condensed Burton’s vast 450,000-word masterpiece of 17th Century English literature to a small fraction of its length, and paired the excerpts with vintage images of leather men at work and play. Robert Burton was fascinated by the variations of human sexuality, albeit more as an observer than as a participant. He wrote about sex in covert Latin passages that are newly translated in Jones’s book. Selections from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton is a delightfully perverse condensation of Burton’s speculations on the sexual proclivities that subsequent generations of gay men put into exuberant practice. www.williamejones.com

2nd Cannons Publications 014
2008, 1st printing, edition of 500. 11x8.5" 43 pages $14.00

Desertshore

Jan Tumlir and Brian Kennon

A collaboration between Jan Tumlir and Brian Kennon and a "prelude catalog" to Tumlir's exhibition of the same name, Desertshore begins with the image from the cover of the Nico album (also a film still from La Circatrice Interieure by Philippe Garrel) to then find a path on/through works from the late 60's - 70's that commonly trip out from the city center and travel to the pasts and futures of desert and space. Moving through Robert Smithson, Ed Ruscha, Bas Jan Ader, Stanley Kubrick's 2001, Alejandro Jodorowsky's El Topo,and Pink Floyd, the book ends with a re-telling of the final sequence of Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point.

2nd Cannons Publications 013
2008, 1st printing, edition of 250. 9.25 x 11" 80 pages. $40.00

Doug and Mike's Adult Entertainment (DVD)

Doug Skinner and Michael Smith

.A DVD collection of videos and live performance footage, Doug and Mike’s “Adult Entertainment” began as a childish version of an adult nightclub act -- with piano, cocktails, bawdy jokes, and hand puppets -- and gradually became more narrative, as the puppet characters took on more life. The cast eventually included: Doug and Mike, increasingly pathetic versions of their creators; Shane and Cory, two women from their acting class; Kevin and Jason, their potty-mouthed nephews; Adrian, their acting teacher/therapist; Mr. Woodie, Doug and Mike’s mascot; and, of course, two talking toilets, both named Mr. Toilet, who talk shop in a public men’s room.

From 1990 to 1998 Doug and Mike’s Adult Entertainment was presented at a variety of venues and festivals in New York City including Dixon Place, Caroline’s Comedy Club, Jay Gorney Modern Art, Holly Solomon Gallery, The Drawing Center, PS1, The Public Theater, The Henson International Puppet Festival, The Soho Arts Festival, Franklin Furnace, Artists Space, The Knitting Factory, PS 122 and in Los Angeles at The Museum of Contemporary Art and in Mike Kelley’s backyard.

2nd Cannons Publications 012
March 2008, 1st printing, edition of 1000.
DVD running time: 57 min. All Region NTSC $20.00

Pulturebook (b&w version)

Darren Bader

pulturebook - first encountered in the 12th Century Norse saga Pillu in reference to an unhappy fisherman who sells his leg to his dog. 200 years later the word is found in verb form --roughly translated as 'to slimp' or 'to bet'-- in an aprocryphal version of Wycliffe's Bible (Jeremiah 29:7) brought to the court of the Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy by his hermaphrodite lover, Ixel Esten. In an anonymous 1576 etching, one of Francis Drake's ships has Pulturebuck emblazoned on three of its sails. Several appearances of various spellings of the word occur in tracts associated with political upheavals from Cromwell to Napoleon III. The Duke of Cumberland named his summer home Pulturbooke in 1783 (only to rename it Alexandriatown three years later). It was notably used of late in space-hiccup form by Sally Ride in 1983. Pulturebook is also the name of a Grammy Award nominated Milwaukee jazz collective and a small pharmaceutical company based in Rheims, France.

2nd Cannons Publications 011
2008, 1st printing, edition of 500. 9 x 7" 385 pages. $25.00

Tearoom - 2nd printing

William E. Jones

Tearoom is a companion piece to Jones’s video of the same name. A work of appropriation, the video Tearoom is a police surveillance film – presented virtually unaltered – of men having sex in a public rest room in Mansfield, Ohio during a three week period in the summer of 1962. This film, used as evidence in court, led to the conviction of over 30 men on charges of sodomy, which at that time carried a minimum sentence of one year in the state penitentiary.

In the book Tearoom, William E. Jones presents the results of research on these cases and on the production of the surveillance film. The book includes a number of historical texts, as well as two new essays by Jones. Tearoom is extensively illustrated with more than 100 film stills, most of them in color. These stills show men from all walks of life who met for furtive sex under the central square of Mansfield, and who went to jail as the result of a law enforcement sting. Tearoom provides a unique view of the clandestine sexual life of a small Midwestern city at the beginning of the 1960s. www.williamjones.com

2nd Cannons Publications 010
2008, 2nd printing, edition of 1000. 11x8.5" 43 pages $24.00

The Ice Skating Tree Opera - Director's Cuts (as a book and DVD)

Julie Lequin

Julie worked (on and off/ but mostly on) on this project for about 2 years. This is Julie’s first publication ever (probably why it took so long) and it details Julie's Ice Skating Tree Opera performance from 2005 and all of its surrounding stories. The book is very nice looking (about 23cm. x 18 cm.); it has a lot of colored pages (err… Brian complained), and some funny words. The DVD takes a while to watch so you’re really getting a lot for your money. There are some singing, gossips, and green screen videos. Watch the trailer to the book

If you feel like investing, you can treat yourself with a copy of the “Limited Double Standard” version, that is with the deluxe book cover (hand knitted by Julie). $250. Please contact orders@2ndcannons.com for more info.

2nd Cannons Publications 009
2007,1st printing, edition of 500. 9 x 7" 111 pages. $35.00

Good Morning, Evil Genius

Meg Cranston

Written between 1996 and 2000 Good Morning, Evil Genius is a fictional (?) story chronicling the adventures...or misadventures...of the unnamed Evil Genius. The work was also the basis of a performance by the same name performed at Galerie Michael Kapinos, Berlin and an exhibiton at Printed Matter in New York. The texts are accompanied with a series of drawings by Meg that are derived from a children's coloring book.

2nd Cannons Publications 008
2007,1st printing, edition of 500. 8.5 x 6.5" 42 pages 8 illus. $12.00

There Weren't Many Girls Around, So We Dated Ideologies. This Left Us Always on the Brink of War. We Often Discussed That a Likely Result of Battle Would Have Been More Girls to Go Around Amongst the Survivors, but We Quibbled Rather Than Acted, & Slept Alone in Our Cold Beds Dreaming of Glory.

Ami Tallman

A series of drawings of interiors, occasionally interrupted by men in uniform, that tells the story of a young aristocratic heir to an English country estate who abandons his manor when coerced by a fetching young member of the Red Cross into taking up trench warfare. The book follows his recollections from the field regarding his old family pile.

2nd Cannons Publications 007
2007, 1st printing, edition of 500. 11.25 x 9", 46 pages. $28.00

Leisure: An Art Journal: Issue #0

Leisure: An Art Journal delays it's first issue by instead publishing Issue #0, a questionnaire. In issue #0 artists, writers, and gallerists were questioned regarding the nature of radness and artistic production. Participants are: Evan Holloway, Bruce Hainley, Lawrence Weiner, Michael Smith, Bruce LaBruce, Darren Bader, Mayo Thompson, AA Bronson, Jess Holzworth, Corrina Peipon, Brian Bress, Julie Lequin, Meg Cranston, Natascha Sofia Snellman, Monique Prieto, TRUDI, Drew Heitzler, Elk, Christopher Russell, Tom Allen, Catherine Taft, Betty Tompkins, Kathe Burkhart, Michael Ned Holte, Paddy Johnson, Ami Tallman, Daniel Hug, and lastly, Jason Meadows (whose answers we found insulting).

Limited edition print by Brian Kennon and Bobbi Woods available.

2nd Cannons Publications 006
2007, 1st printing, edition of 500. 8.5 x 8.5", 63 pages. $12.00

Untitled #1, 2006

Brian Kennon

Deluxe edition includes archival inkjet print.

2nd Cannons Publications 005
2006, 1st printing, edition of 500. 8 x 9", 40 pages. $28.00

FOUL MOUTH

Bruce Hainley

"The foul mouth--c'est moi!--mouths off in lovingly excremental language as it negotiates figures of popular (Liza Minnelli, Michael Jackson, among others) and not so popular (Liza Minnelli, Michael Jackson, among others) culture. Cruising and confusing the readymade and the created, the author with these texts metabolizes the dissolve of the first person in the glare of celebrity. But I could just be drunk." --Paul Lynde

2nd Cannons Publications 004
2006, 1st printing, edition of 500 8 x 6.25" 82 pages. $14.00

Hello Victims: Ad Reinhardt

Brian Kennon

An extension of the much larger three volume Hello Victims book, Hello Victims: Ad Reinhardt presents Reinhardt's black paintings within the context of the equally apocalyptic lenses of Motorhead, Nuclear War and Zombie films.

Out of Print

Signed/numbered edition of 10 available. Contact orders@2ndcannons.com for more info

I Heart Darkness

Natascha Snellman

A collection of 14 casual interviews with fellow artists about their practices, habits, interests, and influences along with reproductions of recent work. Interviewees include: Ami Tallman, Sue De Beer, Sterling Ruby, Ashley Macomber, Gus Van Sant, Brian Kennon, Nina Bovasso, and Kevin Christy.

I Heart Darkness: deluxe edition

Natascha Snellman

The deluxe edition of I Heart Darkness comes with an additional book entitled Little Darlings/Pretty Baby. This second volume is an artist's book filled with Natascha's collages and drawings completed during the period of the I Heart Darkness interviews. The two books are enclosed in a wrap-around cover that ties together with a ribbon in the back.

Limited to 50 signed and numbered copies

2nd Cannons Publications 002-D
2007, limited edition set of 50 signed/numbered, 8 x 5.5"
includes I Heart Darkness (122 pgs), Little Darlings/Pretty Baby (66 pgs), and wrap-around cover. $65.00

Good Boy

Brian Kennon

A collection of dissected and altered Christopher Wool paintings, remade into Misfits song titles, Minutemen song lyrics and other paintings Christopher Wool never made, but we think he should have.

The Cindy Shermans I'd Like to Fuck

Brian Kennon

Black and White Reproductions of the Abstract Expressionists

Brian Kennon

The entire body work of by the Abstract Expressionists is reduced down into a canon of 13 paintings by 13 artists, then reduced even further by being reproduced in black and white (with the paintings true colors indexed neatly around the edges).