Bierke Verlag – Miss Read

Bierke Verlag

Berlin based imprint, publishing in the arts...

Cue the Cue
Jack O'Brien, Cue the Cue, Kestner Gesellschaft, 2026, © Jack O'Brien

This publication accompanying his most comprehensive exhibition to date exhibition is Jack O’Brien’s first monograph. Conceived by the artist himself, it complements the exhibition in both form and content, documenting his practice from 2021–2025 and transfers it into a different medium. Developed as an artist’s book it stands in direct relation to the magazine collages in the exhibition. The torn book cover, perforated paper pages, and a shoelace sealed under cellophane make the publication itself a sculptural gesture.
O’Brien negotiates themes such as staging, visibility, queer identity, and the circular dynamic between consumption, body, and performance.
The result is a monograph which also formally works with the moments of controlled instability that are so striking in the exhibition: floating, supported and warped.

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Coumba Samba: Abstract Coloring Book
Coumba Samba, Coumba Samba: Abstract Coloring Book, KV Hamburg/MauMaus Lissabon, 2026, © Coumba Samba

A coloring book conceived as an artist book. Coumba Samba’s publication prompts you to explore geometric forms and structures with a small set of colored pencils. Using those simple materials one realises how interaction and experimentation challenge again and again the relationship between color, abstraction and internalised form systems.

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Retail Vérité: Vancouverama
A Maior/Bruno Zhu, Retail Vérité: Vancouverama, Art Metropole/Western Front, 2026, © A Maior/Bruno Zhu

Once upon a time there was a strip mall in South Vancouver, on Granville Street across from the big Safeway, just next to the public library, and not far from the Fraser River. On the morning of January 3, a dead woman was found in the parking lot with two suspicious incisions on her neck. A thin trail of blood mixed with a sinister green substance bewildered the patrons and shopkeepers. Bernadette stumbled upon a bloodied corkscrew. @munchenwithmili lurked around with their phone. Sheila clutched onto her tinctures. And then, Pest Detective Star dropped from the sky…
Retail Vérité: Vancouverama is A Maior’s second novella, and the outcome of writing workshops led by A Maior at Western Front in February 2025. Through a blend of improvisation, LARPing, and speed dating, the participants sketched the characters, narrative, and setting in real time. The cohort featured James Albers, Kathy Feng, Manon Fraser, Fiona Glen, Tiziana La Melia, Ben Lickerman, Trey Le, August Mesic, Nina Ortiz, Paige Smid, Kiel Torres, and Yasmine Whaley-Kalaora.

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