March 2021 Catalogue

22 I m a g i n e d W o r l d s E a r l y M a r c h 2 0 2 1 “There Are Mirrors Whose Miracle Isn’t The Truth” 20. FONTCUBERTA, Joan and FORMIGUERA, Pere. Fauna Secreta. Madrid, 1989. Slim quarto, original stiff wrappers. $1400. Click for more info Museumcatalogue of Fontcuberta and Formiguera’s whimsical exhibit purportedly documenting the elusive Dr. Ameisenhaufen’s “veritable bestiary of strangely mutated beasts” (Parr & Badger). Conceptual artist Joan Fontcuberta has “succeeded famously” (Roth, 262) in challenging the authority of “the photographic medium with both a skeptical and a culturally diverse eye” (Parr & Badger II:68). Here Fontcuberta and Pere Formiguera further document the supposed “‘discovery’ in Glasgow of the archive of the German scientist Dr. Peter Ameisenhaufen,” offering evidence of “a veritable bestiary of strangely mutated beasts in remote corners of the world… so convincingly that we are almost persuaded of its veracity even while enjoying the joke” (Parr & Badger II:68). Scarce catalogue for the traveling exhibit of Fauna Secreta , here accompanying the March-June installation at Madrid’s Museo Nacionale de Ciencias Naturales. Text in Spanish, with appendix in English. A fine copy.