Materialverlag

The Materialverlag is a small scale publishing house producing five to ten editions per year. Conceived as a kind of experimental laboratory within the Hochschule für bildende Künste (HFBK), Hamburg, it is usually the first publisher of an artist’s work (for example, Peter Piller).

This close association with the HFBK ensures that the Materialverlag always has a rich supply of interesting projects. The connection also means that the Materialverlag can make use of the professional print workshop and skilled supervisors at the HFBK in order to realize its small scale in-house publications.

Founded in the early Seventies to produce teaching material for the school (Material # 1 to 75), the Materialverlag has subsequently published an array of genres, from agitprop to architecture. However, it has become increasingly focused on the production of artist books. The most recent publication, Da hinten sitzt ein Haus by Patricia Huck, is number 272 in the series.

Students of the HFBK are offered the opportunity to transpose aspects of their work into an editioned book. These editions run from less than one hundred to a thousand copies and consist of photobooks, documentary projects, fanzines and publications which can be regarded as a multiple.

The Materialverlag also houses an Edition Fotografie and an Edition Zeichnung. For the latter, students with a exceptional talent for drawing are proposed by their professors to contribute to the edition. Their drawings are then reproduced at actual size in an edition of 100 copies.

Acquiring a copy of Edition Zeichnung, for a fixed price of €100, is like buying a share at an early stage: there is always the possibility that it may increase in value substantially, especially given the reputation of some of the artists that have studied at the HFBK (Stefan Balkenhol, Jonathan Meese, Daniel Richter). At the same time, it is also an invaluable investment in the long-term continuity of a diverse series of beautifully reproduced drawings by young and emerging artists.