Mark von Schlegell

Press release

MARK VON SCHLEGELL
REAL BOOKS (EXTRAORDINARY TALES)

February 22 - March 30, 2019
Opening Friday, February 22, 6 - 9 PM

"Von Schlegell’s texts are a very strange drug in which one may experience absolute clarity within discrete fragments, while at the same time feeling oneself slipping, or even dissolving, within a general network of chaos. To read von Schlegell’s work is to become physically disoriented. Like the best science fiction, his writings are true to the present. And in this case, it’s a present rendered in its most acute, heightened form."

 -- Chris Kraus

Jan Kaps Gallery is delighted to announce a set of possibilities coming to fruition in the present around a semi-fictional time-traveling bookstore, theorized by Mark von Schlegell, maker of science fiction/art hybrids since at least 1999. Schlegell is well known in the art community for his regularly appearing critical writings, and for the influential science fiction novels published by Semiotext(e), Los Angeles, and Matthes und Seitz, Berlin. He also ran the Pure Fiction seminar at Frankfurt's Staedelschule from 2011-2018, promoting and engaging in art/theater/performance crossovers and independent text production. In the Jülicher Str. space, Schlegell, for the first time, develops what have been his own sporadic semi-literary experiments with sculpture, installation and drawing since the 90s into a unified, experimental exhibition.

In the back gallery, a special adults-only installation “Return of the Lepidopters,” explores and contextualizes the graphic novel written by Schlegell, drawn by Yogyokarta punk bassist, Iwank Celenk, and published by the Southern Hemispshere's Slave Pianos Collective, that became a collaborative Indonesian/Australian rock opera touring Indonesia and Australia 2014-16. 

Across the street in Vosberg reality emerges from fiction, with the launch of REAL // BOOKS, a collaborative project between Jan Kaps and Mark von Schlegell.

Celebrating the Launch of REAL // BOOKS

Online and Time-traveling bookstore. Start-up launch and special exhibition event.

Please join us for the Cologne 2019 launch of REAL // BOOKS, a conceptual re-fit of the gallery's online bookstore in collaboration with writer/artist, Dr. Marq v. Schlegell, ph. D. into a pop-up / online hybrid of unpredictable scheduling.

In collaboration with international independent publishers like Broken Dimanche Press, RE/Search, Spector Books, SuKuLTur, Pork Salad Press, and Semiotext(e); REAL // BOOKS intends to decentralize the current small press distribution system, inaugurating a model wherein the PayPal (or cryptocurrency) user can purchase from the store what will be delivered by the publishers themselves with zero hassle. Doing away with the middleman, REAL // BOOKS challenges the Amazon model by inaugurating a store that needs no stock.

So come over and help us evaporate. REAL // BOOKS launches with a pop-up show room inviting the 21st century shopper not only to browse, but to don white cotton gloves and become intimate with actual copies of rare books ordinarily only on the website.

Deals on real books and special editions by the likes of Amy Ball, Joseph Buckley, Colt Jonner, Karl Marx, Mieko Meguro, Pure Fiction, Fabian Reiman, V. Vale, Mark von Schlegell, H. G. Wells and many other bargains, surprises, rarities and collectibles.