The cream of the crop

Form, not content, is the first thing you notice about Fresh Cream, a chunky new tome celebrating the work of 100 new contemporary artists. Presumably to befit its cutting-edge content, no mere conventional presentation would do for Phaidon’s follow up to its acclaimed predecessor Cream of 1998.

Instead of being stacked on shelves, it is displayed in bookshops within an inflatable pool, each book encased in its own inflated, clear pillow to give a deceptively lightweight appearance. Disappointingly, the pillows have to be destroyed to open the book – truly tamper-proof packaging. Good fun or an unnecessary gimmick?

The book’s content is undoubtedly fascinating enough to speak for itself. Yet maybe such a presentation will help the publisher’s aim of reaching a much broader audience than those already sold on contemporary art – Fresh Cream is devised as an exhibition in the form of a book with the hope of attracting those unlikely to actually attend a gallery show. Yet even aficionados may find the written content a little impenetrable. Phaidon has selected ten curators from around the globe to showcase ten artists – the only criterion is that they have emerged over the past five years.

The transcript of an Internet discussion between the curators on their selection is hard work. More rewarding is the curators’ selection of ten texts from contemporary writers to establish the cultural context in which the artists’ work. Contributions including Marina Warner’s perceptive account of the vilification of single mothers as the cause of society’s ills, an extract – strangely – from Hanif Kureishi’s The Black Album and an enlightening essay by Boris Groys on the rise of photography as the new painting and its subsequent “museumisation”. But by the end of all this, the reader is itching to get to the artists’ work and it’s a fair bet that most will skip the text altogether.

Their reward is an eclectic, truly international selection of work that is variously disturbing, delightful, amusing, weird and frequently downright baffling. It rightly reflects the rise on the contemporary art scene of photography, digital media, installation and performance work, but here the book-as-exhibition is an obviously disadvantageous medium, as is the narrow portrait format which means spreading many of the images across the gutter. Gripes aside, the images make fascinating viewing, with more familiar work by YBA Sarah Lucas and Turner Prize nominees Michael Raedecker, Tomoko Takahashi and Wolfgang Tillmans.

A great deal is hugely disturbing – Nicola Costantino’s clothes from silicon human skin decorated with arseholes and nipples, Oleg Kulik’s installation of himself as a wild dog, and Chen Chieh-Jen’s manipulations of photographs of castration and massacre to name just a few. Painting is represented, including Elizabeth Peyton’s representations of Posh ‘n’ Becks and other celebs, and Takashi Murakami’s childish, yet menacing images.

But it is the selected photography that is particularly fascinating, and challenges perceptions that the medium portrays a reality. Nikki S Lee’s pictures are of herself as chameleon, infiltrated into groups of society such as lesbians, tourists and punks, taken by her new peers; while Miguel CalderÛn’s provocative photographs, videos and paintings showcase the social problems of Mexico City. It is the enlighteningly diverse and – as the title says – fresh array of artists that is the book’s great strength.

While much may not appeal, there is probably something for everyone, and it certainly gives enough of a taster to encourage the reader to even, maybe, attend a more conventional art exhibition to find out more.

Fresh Cream: Contemporary Art in Culture is published by Phaidon Press on 15 November, priced £29.95. An accompanying event, Fresh Cream at Tate Modern: Curators and Emerging Artists, takes place on 26 November at 2pm, priced £10