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What makes Odysseus such a contemporary character even after 2,000 years? Why is the quality that Homer attributes to him (polytropos, which loosely translates as "cunning" or "many-sided") so evocative of questions that bind art and reason, creativity and ethics, freedom and conformity? Odysseus and the Bathers documents the 2018 eponymous exhibition by the internationally acclaimed artist Paul Chan (born 1973) at the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens, Greece. Inspired by the "polytropic" nature of Odysseus, Chan has created a body of work he calls "breathers" kinetic sculptures that are unlike anything else in contemporary art. An essay by Chan explores the concept and history of polytropos and its relationship to what Marcel Duchamp called "the creative act." This book also features an essay by curator Sam Thorne, a conversation between Nikolaos Stampolidis, Director of the Museum of Cycladic Art, and Elina Kountouri, Director of NEON, on the notion of "polytropism," and fragments by the pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides, newly translated by classicist Alexandra Pappas, which illuminate how Odysseus' "cunning" echoes traditions of thinking in ancient philosophy.

A provocative dialogue about art as a form of wrongdoingOne of Plato's most controversial dialogues, Hippias Minor details Socrates' claims that there is no difference between a person who tells the truth and one who lies, and that the good man is the one who willingly makes mistakes and does wrong. But what if Socrates wasn't merely championing the act of lying--as the dialogue has been traditionally interpreted--but, rather, advocating the power of the creative act? In this new translation by Sarah Ruden, Hippias Minor is rendered anew as a provocative dialogue about how art is a form of wrongdoing. The accompanying introduction by artist Paul Chan and essay by classicist Richard Fletcher argue that an understanding of the dialogue makes life more ethical by paradoxically teaching one to be more cunning.

Think Like Clouds collects for the first time the drawings, notes and diagrams of curator, writer and Serpentine Gallery co-director Hans Ulrich Obrist. For the past 22 years, Obrist has curated exhibitions around the world and has interviewed major and minor personalities in nearly every field of endeavor; from architect Rem Koolhaas to painter Gerhard Richter; from astronomer Dimitar Sasselov to journalist and activist Studs Turkel. Obrist draws obsessively during his work in order to help him remember and expand the conversation at hand. But these drawings are more than mere memory aids. Beautiful and enigmatic, they reveal, upon closer scrutiny, constellations of names, ideas, dates, quotes and loose bits of information entangled in wavering lines and undulating scribbles. Each drawing is a conceptual portrait of a conversation or an event. Taken as a whole, they map in visual form the intellectual and historical terrain of one of the most active and curious minds in contemporary art today. Think Like Clouds includes an introduction by scholar and archivist Michael Diers and an interview with Obrist conducted by artist Paul Chan.