Published to accompany an exhibition by Adam Pendleton at Haunch of Venison Berlin, the book design mirrored the process of appropriation and deconstruction used by the artist in his working process. Pendleton is known for his paintings, installations and performances that unite seeming incongruities in a formal embrace. Within his repertoire allusions range from 1960s conceptual art to the Black Arts movement, from experimental poetry to punk rock, from gospel to gay liberation. A thread throughout the artist’s practice is an interest in language and its unique capacity to shape existing realities and inaugurate new ones.

The cover image, rather than being taken from a work by the artist, referenced his appropriation of Sol LeWitt’s Incomplete Cubes in the series of Black Dada paintings by creating a scale model of one of these sculptures and photographing it specifically for the jacket design.

Clean empty spaces juxtaposed with bold, black-and-white grainy imagery, this book expresses the “Black Dada Manifesto” through the subtle and strong use of typography and its play on subtraction.