Echo is Jesse Mockrin’s first museum publication, created for her solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Her paintings reimagine female figures from myth and the Bible, extracting details from European art history and bringing them into the present tense. The design follows this approach, drawing on her process of digging into historical images and reshaping them through a feminist lens.

A fold-out section holds The Descent (2024), Mockrin’s five-panel painting based on the violent and tragic story of the Sabine women. The roll fold allows the painting to open gradually, echoing its scale in the gallery.

The book includes Warburg-style spreads that grew out of Mockrin and curator Adam Harris Levine’s shared obsession with Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas. These spreads reflect Mockrin’s research process, which pulls from both historical sources and contemporary culture. Hundreds of images, from Baroque paintings to figures like Hunter Schafer, Timothée Chalamet, and Rihanna, were gathered, hand-trimmed with the help of Kathryn Yuen, and photographed in studio by renowned still-life photographer Paul Weeks in the spirit of Warburg’s Atlas. Grouped into five themes (Magdalenes, Solomons, Witches, Sabines, and Daphnes), they appear as endpapers and visual interludes, mapping the constellation of references that inform Mockrin’s work.

The book is clothbound with a tipped-in image, giving it a material presence before the first page is turned. Text throughout is set in Sabon Next, Jean François Porchez’s revival of Jan Tschichold’s Sabon, chosen for its classic bookish feel and clarity in long-form reading. For marginalia and side notes, ABC Diatype by Dinamo provides a contemporary counterpoint, highlighting research fragments and annotations.

Alongside the paintings, the catalogue includes a richly illustrated interview between Mockrin and Levine, as well as texts by Carmen Maria Machado and Jacoba Urist.

Jesse Mockrin Echo
Published by DelMonico Books + D.A.P. and the Art Gallery of Ontario

Hardcover (clothbound with tipped-in image)
9.3" × 9.3"
116 pages
× 1 roll fold
ISBN 978-1-63681-187-1