“This publication was planned before it was decided to coincide it with the exhibition Fair Game Leipzig at the Museum of Contemporary Art Leipzig. It is composed of drawings that I made in 2013. The cover instead was designed in 2019 in relation to the exhibition in Leipzig. I wanted it to be in contrast with the gentle drawings inside.” — Nathalie Du Pasquier

A famous designer and co-founder of the Memphis group in Milan in 1981, Nathalie Du Pasquier (born 1957 in Bordeaux, France, lives in Milan, Italy) accompanied the (post)modern adventure around designer Ettore Sottsass, with the creation of objects, fabrics, carpets, and furniture. In 1986, she started devoting herself exclusively to two- and three-dimensional painting. Memphis's radicalism and formal inventiveness measured solely in terms of a scathing and iconoclastic postmodernism erased a little too quickly the adventure's modern foundations. Nathalie Du Pasquier's paintings are a perfect revelation of these connections: axonometric compositions applied to painting, the palette of muffled colors, objects, when they are present in the compositions, wink at the purism of a Corbusier or an Ozenfant. Mixed with memories and assimilations arising from the most tridimensional Suprematism–the architectones–some paintings and constructions also give prominence to this history of art and the applied arts.

A series of viral drawings by Jorge Zontal, signed General Idea, printed in 5 color offset.

Living and working together as part of the late 1960s Toronto counterculture, AA Bronson, Felix Partz, and Jorge Zontal formalized their collaboration in 1969 as a single entity known as General Idea. From their earliest projects like staging of The 1970 Miss General Idea Pageant to their late activist initiatives around the AIDS crisis, General Idea explored multimedia, conceptual, and performance work as a tool for engaging with common culture and its repressions.

Less well-known are the group's drawings, the vast majority of which have never been seen. The drawings shown in A Rare Gift of the Tropics were all produced by Jorge Zontal, who made them as a habitual practice during the group's brainstorming meetings; however, given General Idea's mandate for co-authorship (and as demonstrated by the "GI" signature affixed by Zontal shortly before his death) as well as the circumstances under which they were executed, they are considered to be collaborative. The drawings assumed a greater regularity after 1985, the year the group left Toronto, which felt increasingly isolated from the global art world, for New York. As the 1980s wore on, their early joie de vivre was tempered by the pervasive presence of AIDS. In Bronson's words, it was a period "during which we had to face and somehow incorporate the illness and death of most of our friends, as well as Jorge and Felix themselves."

Although drawn by hand, the repetition of specific motifs follows a logic that is akin to General Idea's own penchant for mass reproduction and that echo the virality of their AIDS works. In their mutability and insistent flow, the drawings are a fascinating window into General Idea's distinct artistic vision and unique notions of authorship, exposing representation's inadequacy while acknowledging its urgency.

An anthology of Pettibon's drawings.

Reprint of the book first published in 2014.

Raymond Pettibon (born 1957 in Tucson, lives and works in Venice Beach) is mostly known for his comic-book-like drawings to which he appends disconcerting and sarcastic texts. His work embraces a wide spectrum of American “high” and “low” culture, from the deviations of marginal youth to art history, literature, sports, religion, politics, and sexuality. Taking their points of departure in the Southern California punk-rock culture of the late 1970s and 1980s and the “do-it-yourself” aesthetic of album covers, comics, concert flyers, and fanzines that characterized the movement, his drawings have come to occupy their own genre of potent and dynamic artistic commentary. As well as artist's books, fanzines, and prints Pettibon's production includes animations and large wall installations.

New series of paintings by the Swiss artist, that examine the role of humankind in nature and within its social fabric on a philosophical-anthropological level.

"I asked Andriu Deplazes if he had always wished to be a painter. No, he said. For a time, he had trained to be a classical musician, but turned away from music because there was something repellent about the need to demonstrate virtuosity. To be a virtuoso, as the moral world depicted in these paintings clearly shows, is not the same as having virtue. And yet, at the same time, there are still traces of virtuosity in Deplazes' practice: in the idealised landscapes that he renders, and in the easy depiction of animal life. It is only humans that he will not denigrate with such perfection. Their overpainted faces do not allow them to be captured as things, but rather present them as subjects. They elude categorisation because they are responding, in real time, to what they see in us." Adam Jasper

Born 1993 in Zurich, Andriu Deplazes lives and works in Zurich, Brussels and Marseille. His paintings create a kind of parallel cosmos that questions the habitual ways of seeing and expectations of the beholder. Wide landscapes in colourfully powerful large format are the setting for curious characters who sometimes melt into the vegetation around them or appear strangely remote from it. His work has been exhibited throughout Europe since 2015.