Michaël Borremans: Horse Hunting was published on the occasion of the artist’s second solo exhibition at David Zwirner in 2006. Amongst the fourteen new paintings on view was the eponymous work Horse Hunting (2005), which portrays a young man, fashionably attired, holding two twigs from each of his nostrils. Available in hardcover, this catalogue includes a text by Belgian artist and curator Hans van Heirseele.

Text by Jeffrey Grove.

The first in a series of small-format publications devoted to single bodies of work, Fire from the Sun highlights Michaël Borremans’s new work, which features toddlers engaged in playful but mysterious acts with sinister overtones and insinuations of violence. Known for his ability to recall classical painting, both through technical mastery and subject matter, Borremans’s depiction of the uncanny, the perhaps secret, the bizarre, often surprises, sometimes disturbs the viewer. In this series of work, children are presented alone or in groups against a studio-like backdrop that negates time and space, while underlining the theatrical atmosphere and artifice that exists throughout Borremans’s recent work. Reminiscent of cherubs in Renaissance paintings, the toddlers appear as allegories of the human condition, their archetypal innocence contrasted with their suggested deviousness. In his accompanying essay, critic and curator Michael Bracewell takes an in-depth look into specific paintings, tackling both the highly charged subject matter and the masterly command of the medium. He writes, “The art of Michaël Borremans seems always to have been predicated on a confluence of enigma, ambiguity, and painterly poetics—accosting beauty with strangeness; making historic Romanticism subjugate to mysterious controlling forces that are neither crudely malevolent nor necessarily benign.” Published on the occasion of Borremans’s eponymous exhibition at David Zwirner in Hong Kong, this publication is available in both English-only and bilingual English/traditional Chinese editions.

Since the late 1990s, when he first began to produce drawings and paintings, Michaël Borremans has created an extraordinarily mature body of work that has captured international attention. The disparate spaces he imagines in his paintings, drawings, sculptures and films are unified by an uncanny sense of dislocation and an often unsettling beauty. Rendered in complex palettes and exquisite techniques, Borremans' works in all media embrace a rich legacy of artistic progenitors, but remain firmly anchored in the present. Presenting over 100 works created by the artist over a 14-year period in all media, this publication includes many works not previously reproduced in books or catalogues, offering the most complete overview of Borremans' oeuvre to date. Contributions include a concise and incisive overview of Borremans' practice; a revealing, in-depth interview between the main author of the book, Jeffrey Grove, and the artist, addressing process, influence and philosophical and critical issues; as well as more than 50 individual entries and mini-essays on individual works in the artist's oeuvre by notable writers, curators, filmmakers and musicians. Described by the artist as the mother of all Borremans books, Michaël Borremans: As Sweet As It Gets is published on the occasion of a major mid-career retrospective. Initially trained in photography and graphic design, the Belgian artist Michaël Borremans (born 1963) turned to painting at the age of 30. Work by the artist is held in numerous public collections, including The Art Institute of Chicago; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Borremans lives and works in Ghent.

"Bathing his subjects in an austere light, and rendering them with strong, confident brushwork, Michael Borremans executes paintings that seduce and hold at bay, keeping the history of art in dialogue while committing wholly to the iconography of our time. The protagonists of these works, derived from pictures in magazines or scientific books, are captured while engaging in activities whose exact nature seems both mundane and mysterious ("they're just sitting there breathing," Borremans told an interviewer), but the artist manages to freight these protagonists, and the air around them, with great emotional tension. Similarly, his apparently sober palette of beiges, browns and greys sometimes gives way to a small flourish of brighter color - a white bow or a ruddy-cheeked face - that breaks into and energizes the whole image. Such sleights of hand, by which paint discreetly but completely incarnates mood, are the crux of Borremans' art, and are what makes him one of the finest contemporary painters in Europe, an heir to the suspended enigmas of Manet and Velazquez and the indoor atmospherics of Chardin and Vermeer. This volume, with its engaging essay by Jeffrey Grove and abundance of color plates, is the first to present all of Borremans' paintings, and thus constitutes the standard survey of his significant accomplishments." --Book Jacket.

For nearly two decades, Belgian artist Micha�l Borremans has created an ambitious and mesmerizing oeuvre that continues to simultaneously fascinate and unsettle viewers. As the art critic Laura Cumming writes in The Observer, "Borremans's gift is for snaring you, enthralling you with all sorts of characters, strange scenarios and possibilities." His works display a concentrated dialogue with previous art historical epochs, yet their unconventional compositions and curious narratives defy expectations and lend them an indefinable character. Painting has remained central in his pursuit to construct a deceptively simple visual world where figures often seem to elude the passage of time. Micha�l Borremans: Black Mould documents the artist's first exhibition at David Zwirner, London in 2015 and his first solo presentation in the city in ten years. This intimately scaled catalogue, which has been designed by the artist in collaboration with Kim Beirnaert, includes thirty-two small- and large-scale paintings from his new series, most of which feature anonymous, black‐robed characters. Alone or in groups, they perform mysterious acts within monochromatic spaces reminiscent of an artist's barren studio. Seemingly behaving according to a symbolic language of their own, they pose alone or interact in communal dances, with some figures holding torches and others exposed naked from the waist down. Their facelessness opens up ambiguous narrative possibilities, like empty canvases with which to construct meaning. Like archetypes capable of embodying shifting meanings, the blank figures become a mold for the human condition, at once satirical, tragic, humorous, and above all, contradictory.

The history of newspaper advertising began in the seventeenth-century Low Countries. The newspaper publishers of the Dutch Republic were the first to embrace advertisements, decades before their peers in other news markets in Europe. In this survey, Arthur der Weduwen and Andrew Pettegree have brought together the first 6,000 advertisements placed in Dutch and Flemish newspapers between 1620 and 1675. Provided here in an English translation, and accompanied by seven indices, this work provides for the first time a complete overview of the development of newspaper advertising and its impact on the Dutch book trade, economy and society. In these evocative announcements, ranging from advertisement for library auctions, the publication of new books, pamphlets and maps to notices of crime, postal schedules or missing pets, the seventeenth century is brought to life. This survey offers a unique perspective on daily life, personal relationships and societal change in the Dutch Golden Age.

Kurt Baschwitz (1886-1968) had a lifelong fascination for 'the riddle of the mass' in both its visible and invisible forms. He was a major pioneer of communication and media studies on the European continent, an early student of the social, political, and mass psychology of crowds, publics, audiences, and public opinion, as well as a versatile social historian. Half a century after his death, however, he risks being forgotten and misunderstood, falling through the cracks of history.

A highly controversial photography project that depicts children smoking, with the intention of highlighting the boundaries between aesthetic success and moral distress Illustrates the contrast between beauty and ugliness. On the one hand, smoking makes people ill, grey and wrinkled; on the other hand, it confers a certain aesthetic appeal Not intended to be a book to file away on your bookshelves, each of the photographs can be removed. Tear them out, send them to someone, or hang them on your wall, just make sure they are seen! Two years ago, Belgian photographer Frieke Janssens came across a YouTube video of a two year old Indonesian child chain smoking, totalling, on average, two packs a day. Recognising the many socio-cultural differences between the East and the West, the artist's plan to confront the Western viewer with such conflicting, surreal images grew and she departed on her new artistic mission. Smoking Kids is the title of Frieke Janssens' somewhat controversial photographic project. Fifteen children aged between four and nine pose in a startling adult way in front of the camera, each smoking a cigarette, cigar or pipe. Looking like they have stepped right out of a 1960's TV show adds a modestly theatrical, retro quality but also something whimsical and unreal to the images. The effect of these photos on the viewer has proven to be both overwhelming and diverse. Since their inauguration at the artist's representing Gallery Ingrid Deuss, Belgium, in 2011, the art world quickly responded with fascination and admiration for this bold series of photographs which resulted in consecutive exhibitions in Belgium, Russia and the USA. Simultaneously, the images travelled the Internet, appearing and reappearing on various blogs and forums where comments of disbelief and concern ruled the day. Unaware of the skillful Photoshop tricks applied to the photos, once again, people convicted this contemporary art to be shocking and manipulative, now even dragging children down the abyss of its sensation-focused ambitions. But, Janssens' photographs are really not that. Instead, they manage to hold an almost perfect balance between something that we consider to be ugly and wrong (the habit of smoking and children who have developed that habit) and an aesthetically pleasing image. Although many will condemn and frown upon the pictured action, Janssens' Smoking Kids is likeable, clever and thought-provoking, like all good art should be. The visual impact of a photograph can be potentially so intriguing that it has the capability of challenging our personal and shared critical opinion. AUTHOR: Frieke Janssens is a widely celebrated photographer of campaigns for diverse, nationally significant cultural institutions and projects. One of few successful contemporary photographers that have managed to stay faithful to her own artistic style and vision, she exploits her growing artistic talent and technical expertise to produce images that make a difference and that are truly intriguing.The perfection of the images, the careful selection of costume, hairstyles and accessories, the varied poses, the suggested emotions, the clever manipulations of the cigarette's smoke, proves her commitment to creating as perfect as possible and attention-grabbing images. 15 colour illustrations