A Concise Atlas of Es Devlin (Paperback)

A captivating visual presentation of Es Devlin's personal yet inherently collective art practice, now available in a new compact edition.

A Concise Atlas of Es Devlin brings all of the artist's work together in one compact, cube-shaped 1,000-page volume. Devlin's protean work is rooted in a lifelong practice of reading and drawing. From sketches in the margins of texts―including poetry, drama, song lyrics, opera libretti, climate reports, and endangered species lists―emerge the technically advanced, collectively imagined universes for which she is globally renowned. Fragile miniature paintings, paper cuts, and small mechanical cardboard models form the seeds of some of the most iconic, large-scale, multidisciplinary cultural manifestations in recent times, from public sculptures and installations outside Tate Modern and Lincoln Center, to kinetic stage designs at the Metropolitan Opera, Olympic ceremonies, Super Bowl halftime shows, and monumental illuminated stage sculptures for globally celebrated musicians.

Devlin's work is at once deeply personal and inherently collective. Over the past decade her art practice has engaged with biodiversity, linguistic diversity, and collective AI-generated poetry. She views the audience as a temporary society and encourages profound cognitive shifts by inviting public participation in communal choral works.

Following the award-winning success of the first edition, originally published in 2023 with a retrospective exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City, A Concise Atlas of Es Devlin is both contracted in size while expanded in extent, featuring thirty new projects from her recent output, showcasing an artist committed to exploring the limits of the visual arts. Spanning over three decades of creativity, the tome features Devlin's personal commentaries on each work, as well as interviews with her collaborators.

1,000 color illustrations

Es Devlin (b. 1971, London, UK) is a British contemporary artist who aims to amaze people into changing their minds. She creates large-scale sculptures that combine light, music, and language in order to encourage the cognitive and behavioral shifts that are becoming ever more urgent in the context of the current climate emergency. Her work has been displayed at Tate Modern, Serpentine, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and at Pace Gallery's Superblue Miami, alongside a new work by James Turrell. She has created stage sculptures for Beyoncé, The Weeknd, U2, the Royal Opera House, National Theatre, La Scala, and the Met Opera, as well as the 2022 Super Bowl, featuring Dr. Dre, Kendrick Lamar, and Eminem.