Sophie Calle: Catalogue raisonn of the unfinished

(Hardback)

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A catalogue raisonn of never-before-seen abandoned projects by the artist Sophie Calle.

'I hate things being finished. Death is final... Life is in the 'almost finished'.' - Pablo Picasso

'But when everything comes to an end, what will become of the ideas that went nowhere, that were biding their time in boxes, in coffins Before we die, we must catalogue our attempts, our first drafts, our abandoned projects, and give life to our intentions. It's a way of putting an end to it.' - Sophie Calle

Accompanying her exhibition 'A toi de faire, ma mignonne' at the Muse Picasso in Paris, Sophie Calle invites the reader to explore a catalogue raisonn of her unfinished ideas. These accounts, each stamped with a red verdict giving the reason that they were not completed, offer a parallel to her True Stories, a collection that has been regularly reissued since 1994. In this landmark publication, which reveals the hidden aspects of an artistic practice spanning decades, the main themes of her work come to light: coincidence, chance encounters, and incompletion as an ending in and of itself; and trying and failing as the necessary byproduct of the artistic act.

Reviews

Her reputation as one of the great postmodern image-makers testifies to something impersonal: her native culture's obsession with documentation and procedure, and the indefinite relation between an event or scenario, and the traces it leaves behind.--Nicholas Gamso "Frieze"

Author Bio

The French artist Sophie Calle has held exhibitions internationally since the late 1970s. Described variously as a conceptual artist, photographer, videographer and even detective, she combines text and photography in a narrative style that is distinctively her own. She is the 2025 winner of Japan Art Association's Praemium Imperiale prize.