Martin Kippenberger — Picture a Moon, Shining in the Sky, Starship Verlag, Berlin, 2007

Softcover, 12.5 × 19.5 cm, 80 pages. English translation by Micah Magee. Good vintage condition: light handling wear, minor rubbing to covers, soft corner wear, light age toning.

Originally published by Berlin-based Starship Verlag in conjunction with the exhibition STARSHIP outside-in at the Lenbachhaus, Munich, this publication presents an English-language edition of a long conversation with Martin Kippenberger first published in Vienna’s ARTFAN magazine in 1991. The edition expands and reintroduces a period interview that captures Kippenberger at the height of his notoriety and influence.

Few artists loom larger over contemporary art’s understanding of authorship, self-mythology, networking, failure, humour, and institutional critique than Martin Kippenberger. His influence stretches from the social choreography of the 1990s art world to the post-studio and post-conceptual practices that followed. The interview format is especially important because Kippenberger’s ideas often circulated as stories, jokes, conversations, and contradictions as much as through exhibitions themselves.

This publication belongs to that secondary infrastructure. Not a catalogue. Not an exhibition invitation. Not quite a monograph. A portable record of speech.

The cover reproduces a handwritten note associated with Kippenberger’s working process, while the interior combines conversation, archival imagery, and editorial framing. The result feels less like a retrospective publication than a recovered transmission from the artist’s own circulation network.

Within a contemporary context, publications such as this have become increasingly sought after as collectors shift attention from major catalogues toward smaller artist books, interviews, magazines, and printed matter that document how artists actually moved through the world. Compared to Kippenberger exhibition catalogues produced in larger quantities, Starship publications remain relatively scarce and are encountered far less frequently on the secondary market.

A printed conversation. A delayed broadcast. An artist reduced to language, then redistributed through a book.

Shipping and handling included in the listed price.