Javier Téllez is a Venezuelan artist, living and working in New York City.

Téllez holds a singular perspective on issues surrounding psychiatric treatment, mental illness, normalcy, and the spaces we construct to confine these vexing questions.

This book comprises a visual essay, purportedly a guide to the rules of chess, interwoven with texts by philosophers, literary figures, sociologists, and others, while touching upon references as diverse as Hieronymus Bosch, the Rorschach test, surveillance architecture, electroconvulsive therapy, and the Sharon Tate murders.

Games Are Forbidden in the Labyrinth opens new spaces for play across formerly closed systems and inverts the power dynamics between surveillance tower and cell.

This book upon Téllez’s exhibitions at San Francisco Art Institute and REDCAT Los Angeles.

With a foreword by Hesse McGraw and texts by Ruth Estévez and Dieter Roelstraete.

Designed by Roger Willems

Published by Roma Publications in cooperation with REDCAT Los Angeles / SFAI / Kadist Art Foundation, 2015

Softcover, 192 pages, color and b&w images, 5.5 × 8.2 inches

ISBN: 978-9-49-184329-7