Unfold This Moment explores the work of Carol Bove, one of the most inventive and protean artists of her generation, whose practice has expanded—via numerous stylistic evolutions over two decades—from ethereal drawings of Playboy models to towering crushed-metal sculptures. Considering both her art and her life, the book offers a linear history of a figure who doesn’t believe in linear time—her work evoking multiple temporalities simultaneously—and who harbors covertly radical ambitions for what art might do to the viewer’s mind and body: not least how, without slipping into esotericism, it might serve as a gateway to meditative states. But, as befits someone who strategizes to displace her own ego in her art, the writing here refocuses Bove’s artistic output into a prism for wider questions of artistic conduct and inspiration. How to react resourcefully to unhelpful frameworks of reception; maintaining curiosity while performing the increasingly professionalized role of being a successful artist; the value of instinct and the unconscious in creativity; openness to magical coincidences; and the overlap between the intellectual territory of contemporary art and some of the oldest spiritual philosophies.

Martin Herbert is a writer and critic based in Berlin. He is associate editor of ArtReview and contributes regularly to international art journals. He is the author of Mark Wallinger (Thames & Hudson, 2011), The Uncertainty Principle (Sternberg Press, 2014), and Tell Them I Said No (Sternberg Press, 2016).