Paul Ramírez Jonas

The book surveys the work of New York based artist Paul Ramírez Jonas over the last ten years and offers an insight into the artist’s fascination with mechanical and redundant technologies. The catalogue takes its name from a work in which the artist fabricated replica turn-of-the-century kites. Attached to each kite is a clockwork camera that takes a photograph of the artist on the ground below. These photographs depict the artist isolated in an expansive landscape, the guide rope appearing like an umbilical cord connecting body to air.

The publication was produced to coincide with the artist’s Heavier Than Air exhibition at Ikon in June 2004 - Ramírez’s first solo exhibition in the UK. A sense of futile endeavour - communicated through the artist’s use of low-tech or redundant technologies - pervades the work and an almost perverse celebration of ‘failure’ as the unwritten history of technological advancement provides the basis for meditations on much broader concerns such as time, memory and loss.

Ramírez’s subtle humour and lightness of touch, however, ensures a degree of optimism and playful wit is maintained throughout. The fully illustrated catalogue contains a foreword by Ikon director, Jonathan Watkins, essays by Sofia Hernandez Chong Choy and Ines Katzenstein, and three interviews with the artist as well as a biographical timeline and bibliography.