Shapes, Islands and Text is the first volume of the Intelligentsia collection edited by Cruz Garcia and Nathalie Frankowski. Keeping an experimental character, the publication creates a manifesto through the juxtaposition of paintings, poetry, essays, images and objects created through and paralleled to the collaboration Garcia Frankowski.
Like a conceptual tryptique, Shapes, Islands and Text presents three working tools that although having the capacity to function autonomously, once placed on the same space have the potential to create new narratives. The publication focuses on three spheres of equal importance. The vademecum presents: Shapes that are explored through multiple strategies –from monochromatic paintings to collages of pure geometries; conceptual Islands that are not only independent from any all-absorbing discourse but that one next to each other constitute theoretical archipelagoes; and Texts that sometimes are pure form and other times are independent like islands in the ocean.
The edition of Shapes, Islands and Text aims to advance the experimental nature of the Intelligentsia collection.
INTELLIGENTSIA aims to present a coherent reading of a series of visual and literary experiments made by Cruz Garcia and Nathalie Frankowski since 2008. While the authors are architects, artists and writers, the projects presented by INTELLIGENTSIA manage to reach freedom beyond the limits of each of the disciplines, while capturing the influences of parallel practices.
The collection INTELLIGENTSIA recognizes the intellectual and visual autonomy of a repertoire of works that, ranging from painting, to poetry, essays and visual narratives, are able to create new aesthetic and conceptual discourses. Far from presenting mere monographic documents, INTELLIGENTSIA creates an editorial infrastructure with the aim to explore the artist's book as an introspective reflection and critical manifesto without losing sight of its historical and cultural reference.
Images: Black Triangle, 40x40x40cm, Oil Painting on canvas, 2013; Detalle de Composition of Peripheral Element and Typography (NEWSPEAK), 200cm x 100cm, Oil Painting on canvas, 2013; No Turning Back, Image from Wall Stalker, 2010; Study No.3: Metropolis.
Cruz Garcia (San Juan, 1983) is a Puerto Rican architect, artist and writer graduated from the Universidad de Puerto Rico.
Nathalie Frankowski (Dundee, 1985) is a French architect, artist and poet graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Paris La Villette.
After finishing their studies, Garcia and Frankowski co-founded in Brussels WAI Architecture Think Tank as a workshop for architectural intelligentsia, while simultaneously collaborating on the art collective Garcia Frankowski.
Among Garcia and Frankowski’s most significant writings, editorial works and book designs are the graphic narrative in magazine format What About It?(WAI Think Tank Publishers), the first manifesto on pure form in architecture Pure Hardcore Icons (Artifice Books, 2013), the critical manifesto Narrative Architecture (2014), and multiple essays and manifestoes published on critical magazines around the world, among them Monu Magazine on Urbanism, Conditions, Volume, Pin-Up, Horizonte, Studio and Zawia.
Of growing international interest, the work of Garcia and Frankowski has been exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, San Juan, Santiago de Chile, Paris, Dublin, London, Madrid, Barcelona, Milan, Berlin, Weil am Rhein, Helsinki, Bratislava, Porto, Beijing, Shanghai, Sydney, Melbourne, Tokyo and Osaka.
Title: Shapes, Islands, and Text: a Garcia Frankowski Manifesto
Authors: Cruz Garcia, Nathalie Frankowski
Publisher: Vibok Works, INTELLIGENTSIA collection
ISBN: 978-84-941464-7-3
Pages: 96 Dimmensions: 15x15 cm
Illustrations: Color
Languages: Spanish / English
Objective: Artist book of a limited edition numbered series of 100.
