A facsimile of one of Kaari Upson's notebooks, offering a moving glimpse into the raw immediacy of her thinking and the layered intensity of her practice

Published with Kunsthalle Basel.

When Kaari Upson (1970-2021) died of cancer at the age of 51, she left behind an extensive body of unfinished work and a breadth of materials related to her practice, including dozens of notebooks. This facsimile re-creates the one she used to sketch and reflect in the months leading up to her exhibition Go Back the Way You Came at Kunsthalle Basel in 2019--the last to show new work before her death. Alongside a faithful reproduction of each page, the notebook also includes a booklet in which Elena Filipovic illuminates the practice of "doubling" in Upson's work and explains why Upson's notebooks are crucial to understanding her practice: "Upson was a tenacious notetaker; her drawings and notebooks, in which little was held back, act as capacious ledgers that trace the motley cosmos of what she thought, made, or longed yet to make."