Michael Baers +

The Truth is Concrete but the Concrete is Abstract is a photo-comic which used three photographs of Bertolt Brecht and Walter Benjamin playing chess, taken in the backyard of Brecht’s house at Skovbotstrand, Denmark, in the summer of 1935 by his assistant, collaborator, and lover, Margarete Steffin. The three photographs were cropped in different ways to create the appearance of plenitude. In the comic, Brecht and Benjamin, finding themselves in heaven, brainstorm the plot for a play about Danish asylum policy (after the Nazi assumption of power in 1933 Brecht took refuge in the country for a period of time, before fleeing first to Sweden and then to the United States). At the time of the exhibition, Danish asylum policy had become a fraught topic within the country. The comic was produced in an edition of 5,000, and in the context of the exhibition the aggregate copies were assembled into a fort-like structure that exhibition visitors were invited to destroy by taking copies.

Conceived in the independent spirit of art labels such as Berlin’s Gelbe Records, crusty stronghold Crass Records, or the No Wave survey by Just Another Asshole, Wild Flesh’s Various Artists compilation speaks to a shared sense of mission between all on board, while embracing their expressive diversity. Expect to meet myriad voices you wouldn’t hear elsewhere, ranging from the prim but coruscating dream pop of Martina Gordon with ‘Arc Minute’, to June Junior’s Mica Levi + Tirzah-esque ‘Dick Trap’, to the druggy Dome-like drowse-pop of Kayla Guthrie in ‘Erotic Death’, label owner Cammisa Buerhaus’ hazy sunset stroller ’Schizovztt’, to spoken word pieces by Clara Lou, and the burnished amp fuzz of ‘A Habit’ by Eve Essex.

Unknown Latvian Photography explores the rich yet largely overlooked legacy of Latvian photographers, characterized by Nordic restraint and depth. The book covers a significant period in the country's photographic history, a previously unseen part of Latvia's visual heritage.

Sizes - a4 х 16
Mixed media

The series of drawings Most Mixed and Funniest consists of free permutations on a single abstract figure, suggesting its infinite variations. Having observed tiny differences in my own repetitive actions, I began to explore the non-reductive, complexifying quality of abstraction.
It is worth noting the play on words contained in the original Russian version of the serie's title: Самый смешанный и самый смешной. In Russian, Смешанный (mixed) and смешной (funny), while possessing completely different roots are nevertheless extremely consonant. While superficially similar, they have at the same time nothing in common with one another.

One page from my current graphic novel.