MADRID.- Edmund de Waal will present breath, an exhibition of new work inspired by the craft of bookmaking, at Ivorypress in Madrid from 20 February – 11 May 2019.

At the heart of the project is a unique artist’s book created by de Waal for Ivorypress over a number of years. Made from paper, porcelain and fragments of manuscript, the work explores the materiality of books and the traditional processes of binding, papermaking and printing. Taking its inspiration from the work of one of the most important German-language poets of the post war period, the Holocaust survivor, Paul Celan, the book contains pages brushed with porcelain slip featuring handwritten poems inscribed by de Waal, with new texts about the poet.

Six volumes of the artist’s book will be displayed alongside a series of 17 new artworks created specifically for the exhibition, including vitrines, shelves and diptychs presented in the form of open books. In addition, a Reading Room at Ivorypress will feature a selection of 100 books curated by de Waal for visitors to sit and read.

Edmund de Waal said: “For the last few years my studio has been full of papers, liquid porcelain, scribbled poems and vellum fragments. I’ve made a book for Paul Celan: it uses four different papers, each of a different weight, and a different whiteness - a book of different kinds of breath. A book that becomes a breathing in and out - as you move between the lighter and heavier papers, the text repeating itself. Celan’s poems are here in German and in English translation, sometimes printed opposite each other, sometimes overlapping. You see the shadow of one poem on another. This exhibition breathis an attempt to make a book worthy of Celan, using porcelain, paper, marble, vellum, ink, gold and words to feel and sound his poems again.”

Ivorypress was founded in Madrid in 1996 by Elena Ochoa Foster as a publishing house and exhibition space specialising in artists' books. The project currently includes a wide range of activities within the framework of contemporary art, including its own exhibition space and bookshop, art consultancy and curatorial services and editorial services, audio-visual productions and education.

Edmund de Waal (b. 1964, Nottingham) is an internationally acclaimed artist and writer, best known for his large-scale installations of porcelain vessels, often created in response to collections and archives or the history of a particular place. De Waal’s project for Ivorypress, breath, is an homage to the poetry of Paul Celan, which has been a constant inspiration for the artist in exhibitions such as Atemwende at Gagosian, New York; or the collector (for Paul) at the V&A, London, among others.

Recent exhibitions include a response to the Viennese émigré architect, Rudolph Schindlerat the Schindler House, Los Angeles; to the Italian painter Giorgio Morandi at Artipelag, Stockholm; and the collection of the Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna, curated on the theme of anxiety. Kneaded Knowledge, co-curated with Ai Weiwei, was shown at the National Gallery, Prague, and Kunsthaus, Graz. De Waal’s fascination with porcelain and white was the focus of a series of exhibitions including white at the Royal Academy of Arts, London; On White at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; and Lichtzwang for the Theseus Temple, Vienna. His most recent solo gallery shows include the poems of our climate, at Gagosian San Francisco (2018) and Irrkunst at Galerie Max Hetzler with the Walter Benjamin Archive, Berlin (2016).

He is also renowned for his family memoir, The Hare with Amber Eyes (2010), which won the RSL Ondaatje Prize and the Costa Biography. His second book, The White Road, was published in 2015.