In Conversation with the Cosmos explores the experimental practice of Filipino artist David Medalla (1938–2020). Accompanying an exhibition at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the publication brings together works on paper, painting, sculpture, public performance and political activism to illuminate the personal relationships that shaped Medalla’s art-making.
The book’s design is inspired by Medalla multifaceted work and personality, reflected in the book’s typography through combining two typefaces into one to create an irregular and vibrating text. The hard-case cover features a photograph – overprinted on blue paper – of Medalla's bio-kinetic sculpture series Cloud Canyons, as an explicit acknowledgment of the erotic sensibility permeating the artist's work. The swiss binding reveals a secondary soft cover featuring one of the artist's political, anti-fascist works. Overprinted black-and-white imagery becomes a motif throughout to distinguish between Medalla's bodies of work. Within these sections, artworks are brought into close dialogue with one another through richly illustrated layouts.
Clay Perry, David Medalla’s Cloud Canyons, 1964
David Medalla, WE FILIPINOS LIVING ABROAD CONDEMN THE FASCIST REGIME OF MARCOS AND HIS GANG OF HOODLUMS, 1972
