GÖTTINGEN .- Shaped by spontaneity and subversion, STEIDL–WERK No.30: KUNSTHAUS GÖTTINGEN redefines the traditions of offset printing. Each book in this limited edition boasts a different range of colors and is thus unique. The publication is a collaboration between Theseus Chan, Gerhard Steidl and the art space Kunsthaus Göttingen, where Chan showed WERK No.30 in “printing futures” as part of documenta 15.

The installation, which he added to daily, was Chan’s love letter to printed matter in all its forms (from paper sheets and printing plates to recycled packaging), and the book is both the documentation and final piece of this work. Chan and Steidl took up the manifest of WERK No.30—“to malfunction established mindsets, techniques, and procedures by sabotaging machines and human interventions”—and realized it in book form through what they call “reverse engineering,” deconstructing the processes of printing in order to enhance the results. Embracing intuition and chance, they retained normally discarded test sheets for binding, shut off water on press to create unpredictable color patterns, and exchanged standard CMYK colors for fluorescent variants. The outcome champions “printed anarchy” and is no less than a wholly new form of book.

Theseus Chan is a Singaporean graphic artist with a strong interest in materials and printing technology. He runs the studio, WORK, and his publication, WERK Magazine, has garnered international acclaim. His collaborators include Rei Kawakubo and Gerhard Steidl. He was awarded Designer of the Year at the inaugural President’s Design Award Singapore in 2006. In 2015 he became the only Singaporean to be elected as member of Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI). He was one of four overseas artists, along with 16 Japanese artists, selected to produce artworks for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.

Born in Göttingen in 1950, Gerhard Steidl founded his own publishing house in 1968, and worked as a printer and designer. Steidl publishes both literature and the world’s largest series of contemporary photography. He also curates international exhibitions. In 2020, he won the Sony World Photography Awards’ »Outstanding Contribution to Photography« prize and the Gutenberg Prize. In 2021, the publishing house received the German Publishing Award of the Federal Government of Germany. Steidl is also the initiator and founding director of the Kunsthaus Göttingen, which opened in spring 2021 and where he curated the documenta 15 partner project.