Join Arcana: Books on the Arts on Saturday, November 2nd, between 4:00 and 6:00 PM for a book signing and conversation between noted Los Angeles-based photographer Paul Mpagi Sepuya and art historian Gökcan Demirkazik to celebrate the publication of the brand new Aperture monograph Dark Room A-Z by Paul Mpagi Sepuya.

If you cannot attend and would like to order a signed copy to have shipped or to pick up at the shop, please place your order below!

We look forward to seeing you!

“Paul Mpagi Sepuya reflects on the methodologies, strategies, and points of interest behind a single, expansive body of work at a pivotal moment in his career. Sepuya’s photography is grounded in a collaborative, rhizomatic approach to studio practice and portraiture. This volume unpacks his Dark Room series (2016–21), offering a deep dive into the thick network of references and the interconnected community of artists and subjects that Sepuya has interwoven throughout the images. The excavation and mapping of intellectual and artistic data points across the artist’s work is presented through three distinct ‘voices,’ allowing for a comprehensive cross-referencing of conceptual categories. Each category is alphabetized and illuminated via new texts by curator and scholar Gökcan Demirkazik; selections from previously published texts about the work by critics, colleagues, and friends; quotations of other writers’ work that inspire the artist; along with writings by the artist on his thematic preoccupations as they appear and reappear throughout this ongoing body of work. Dark Room A–Z serves as an iterative return and exhaustive manual to the strategies and generative ways of working that have informed Sepuya’s image-making over the past two decades.”

Paul Mpagi Sepuya is a Los Angeles–based artist. His work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Guggenheim Museum, and Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, among other institutions. Notable recent exhibitions include a solo survey at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, a solo exhibition at Amsterdam’s Foam museum, the 2019 Whitney Biennial, and Being: New Photography 2018 at the Museum of Modern Art.

Gökcan Demirkazik is an art historian, curator, and critic, and is currently a PhD student in art history at University of California, Los Angeles. His writing has appeared in ArtAsiaPacific, Artforum, ArtReview, di’van: A Journal of Accounts, Even, and Frieze.

Upcoming Arcana Events

Saturday, November 9th, 4:00 – 6:00 PM
Patrick O’Dell: Epicly Later’d
Book Signing

Saturday, November 16th, 4:00 – 6:00 PM
Lorcan O’Herlihy + Greg Goldin: Building in Place
Book signing + Discussion

Saturday, November 23rd, 4:00 – 6:00 PM
Ryan McGinley: Yearbook
Book Signing

Saturday, November 21st, 4:00 – 6:00 PM
Huggy Bear: Killed (Of Kids)
Book Launch