Threewalls is pleased to host the Chicago book release for COOKIE!, a new collection of writings by the Berlin-based critic Jan Verwoert. COOKIE! was edited by Vivian Sky Rehberg and Marnie Slater. The book was co-published by Sternberg Press, the Piet Zwart Institute, and the Willem de Kooning Academy. The author will attend, and speak in conversation with the artist David Giordano. The event is free and open to the public. Books will be available for sale.

From Sternberg Press:

If we don’t merely reduce art to clever code play in the arenas of representation, how do we speak about what is at stake? In response to this question, Verwoert addresses the forces at the heart of the tragicomedy that making, showing, and critiquing art implicates us in. He honors the basic joys of turning one thing into another, and the miracles of rhythm and rhyme that characterize the residual level of mimetic magic in art. In this key, the unverifiable is practiced daily: bodies are remade, feelings transfigured. As Alina Szapocznikow wrote, the mouth chews and out comes sculpture. Verwoert’s COOKIE! renders visible the endless emotional labor of setting the stage (for others), poses the thorny question of whether there could ever be a labor union for con-artists (like us), and gestures toward an ethics of disappointment to battle false expectations and as a way to come to terms with the fact that—no matter how you look at it—criticism hurts.

COOKIE! is a sequel to 2010’s Tell Me What You Want, What You Really, Really Want (edited by Vanessa Ohlraun), and the third in a series of books published with the Piet Zwart Institute.

Jan Verwoert’s writing on art and philosophy has been published in numerous international magazines, journals, and artists’ monographs. He is a contributing editor at frieze magazine and has been a faculty member at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam (Netherlands) since 2005.

David Giordano is an artist and graphic designer. His recent publications include: Oneness, in collaboration with William Pope.L (Paper Monument/n+1 Foundation, Brooklyn, NY); The Child Alberta, co-edited with Silke Otto-Knapp, Mitch Speed, and Jan Verwoert (Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff, AB); Geof Oppenheimer’s Modular Objects Civil Society (Whitewalls, Chicago, IL).

Threewalls is a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing Chicago’s cultural capital by cultivating contemporary art practice and discourse. Through a range of exhibitions and public programs, Threewalls creates a locus of exchange between local, national, and international contemporary art communities.

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