NEW YORK, NY.- Secretary Press announces the publication of its latest book, Stones Throw [ISBN: 9780997120608, March 7, 2016, paperback, $28.99] by art historian, critic and curator David Deitcher.
This multi-layered text describes the social, political and personal context that framed the emergence of one of the most critically acclaimed artists of the late-20th century, Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Stones Throw attests to the importance of relationships forged throughout the most challenging years of the North American AIDS crisis, as Deitcher recounts his friendships with Gonzalez-Torres, with the activist curator Bill Olander, and the milieu to which they belonged.
The title, Stones Throw, refers to the resonating effects on the author of a single sentence by Carl Andre: My sculptures are masses and their subject is matter. Gonzalez-Torres brought that sentence to the authors attention soon after Deitcher accepted the artists invitation to write the introductory essay for the catalogue that accompanied Gonzalez-Torress 1992 project for Magasin 3 Konsthall (Stockholm).
Now, twenty years after Gonzalez-Torress death, Deitcher revisits many of his most celebrated works. Stones Throw strikes a balance between personal remembrance and cultural analysis, and is richly illustrated with previously unpublished ephemera and full color reproductions of poignant works by, among others, Nayland Blake, Tony Feher, Jim Hodges, and Roni Horn. In its combination of critical re-evaluation and personal testimony, Stones Throw marks a further development in Deitchers commitment to writing intimate art histories.
Born in Montreal, Canada, David Deitcher is a writer, art historian, and critic whose essays have appeared in Artforum, Art in America, Parkett, the Village Voice, and other periodicals, as well as in numerous anthologies and monographs on such artists as Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Isaac Julien, and Wolfgang Tillmans. He is the author of Dear Friends: American Photographs of Men Together, 18401918 (Abrams, 2001) and curator of its accompanying exhibition at the International Center of Photography in New York. Since 2003, he has been core faculty at the International Center of Photography/Bard College Program in Advanced Photographic Studies. He lives in New York City.