The Rough Law of Gardens documents Olaf Holzapfel and Nahum Tevet’s eponymous joint exhibition and explores the intergenerational differences between two unique artists. Both artists’ work rejects the global logic of growth and traverses the bounds of sculpture and painting: each of their practices involves ideas to do with materiality, learning, and memory.

Olaf Holzapfel explores the interstices between craft and art, and consequently, between orality and literacy. Much of his work presented in this catalogue—framework installations, hay images, and straw images are displayed in this book—was made together with farmers and craftspeople; by transforming age-old handiwork into contemporary art, Holzapfel unsettles the division between nature and culture, and tradition and modernity.

Nakano Sakaue documents a series of photographs realized by Olaf Holzapfel during a residency in Tokyo. The artist has depicted a kind of residue from the city’s buildings: neon lights, images, and street signs, which are featured as so many promises for orientation.