Michael Baers + – Miss Read

Michael Baers +

This year Michael Baers has outsourced the selection on his table to the artist Anastasia Ryabova. Below are some of the items on offer:

- Stickers by Anna Mikheeva - an independent researcher, occasional DJ, editor of syg.ma platform, organizer of UNION PAIN family festival, one of the members of MANDA music band and an initiator of Ladno…/Well… project.

- Candy and Toffee on the Edge of Feud, Second Edition, Plateau Togliatti, Anastasia Ryabova, 2022
- Most Mixed and Funniest, Anastasia Ryabova, 2024

- The Head Cabinet - Collection Catalogue - Vol.1, 2019
They have been collecting heads and busts, salvaged from the trash cans and containers. With this catalogue, and through their passion for the recovery, preservation, and enhancement of discarded sculptures, they have made it possible to witness the many issues that challenge the practice of sculptors, amateurs or aspiring artists.
The heads are currently in the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal.

by Charles-Antoine & Friends

- Sex Workers' Pin by Katya Craftsova - 50€

- Various Artists, Wild Flesh Productions, Cammisa Buerhaus

- A Paper Desert: The Western Sahara Conflict, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2022
- An Oral History of Picasso in Palestine, 2014
- The Truth is Concrete but the Concrete is Abstract, 2007
(by Michael Baers*)

- Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers, Second Hand, Re-Print, With former owner's curse, Barbara Ehrenreich, Deirdre English, 1972 - 666€

- Unknown Latvian Photography, 2016
by Ivars Gravlejs - Ph.D., associate professor was born in the deepest forests of Latvia and is often called an enfant terrible.

*Michael Baers is an artist and writer who received his PhD from the Academy of Fine Art Vienna in 2014 and since 2020 is an affiliated researcher at Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO) in Berlin. He is currently working on a graphic novel about the Polesia region of Eastern Europe.





The Truth is Concrete but the Concrete is Abstract
Michael Baers, The Truth is Concrete but the Concrete is Abstract, 2007 © 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.

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Various Artists
Cammisa Buerhaus, Various Artists, Wild Flesh Productions, 2019 © Cammisa Buerhaus

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.

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Unknown Latvian Photography
Ivars Gravlejs, Unknown Latvian Photography, self publishing, 2016 © Ivars Gravlejs

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.

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Most Mixed and Funniest
Anastasia Ryabova, Most Mixed and Funniest, 2024 © Anastasia Ryabova

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.

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What Comes Back, What Goes Away
Michael Baers, What Comes Back, What Goes Away, 2024 © Michael Baers

One page from my current graphic novel.

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