Fair Enough: Speaking Volumes

The posts so far:
Fair Enough: And I'm Off
Fair Enough: Traveling Incognita?
Fair Enough: All Over But the Posting
Fair Enough: Art or Trash?
Fair Enough: Prologue to the Report
Fair Enough: ABMB, Part 1
Fair Enough: ABMB, Part 2
Fair Enough: Aqua Art
Fair Enough: Pulse
Fair Enough: Seven
Fair Enough: Scope
Fair Enough: NADA
Fair Enough: Ink
Fair Enough: A Peek at Art Miami
Fair Enough: Doubletake at Art Miami
Fair Enough: Art Miami
Fair Enough: My Just Right Breakfast

Rebecca Horn, detail of work at Galerie Lelong, New York and Paris; ABMB

A Little Prologue
Book Arts—i.e. artist-made books with a focus on the handmade, hand-bound object, possibly in conjunction with letterpress or other kinds of printing—are a thread in the fabric of contemporary art. But beyond the one-of-a-kind or limited-edition volume, there has been an explosion in the way books are made, used and referenced in contemporary artmaking.

Two Recent examples:  At Invisible-Exports, a small gallery on Orchard Street, Mickey Smith created an installation (October 29-December 19) in which out-of-date volumes of the Federal Reporter, a legal reference containing the decisions of federal appellate courts, created a raised floor in the gallery. If you wanted to get to the back of the gallery, you stepped up onto the book floor and walked across it. On the wall were photographs of notable figures with groaning bookshelves in the background—books as symbols of intellectual status.

Mickey Smith, solo exhibition at Invisible-Exports, New York City, Ocrober 29-December 19

Nancy Natale assemblage, photographed in her Western Mass. studio this fall; detail below

Around the same time I saw that show, I drove up to Western Massachusetts to visit the studio of artist Nancy Natale. She’s a friend, and I wanted to see the work she’d posted on her blog—a series called Running Stitch, in which she’d been assembling book parts into a formal arrangement of horizontal strips secured with vertical rows of tacks. I liked them when I saw them on her blog. I loved them in person.

As libraries are throwing out reference books and even novels as fast as they are being updated on line or made available for personal e-books, artists are snapping them up. Some artists have a regular route, hitting libraries (or the dump) on trash day. Still, I was surprised at the enormous number of book objects I saw at the fairs. Of course it makes sense. Given the cost of art supplies in this economy, why not dig into free materials? But beyond that, given our increasingly digitized information systems, I think the tangibility of actual volumes satisfies a hunger we may not even know we have.

On to the Shows
I’ve posted almost 70 images of works I saw at the fairs: installations with actual books, found and preserved volumes, made-up books, paintings and sculptures of books, drawings and photographs of books, book parts, book pages, altered books, an illuminated manuscript, a few magazines and catalogs for good measure, and that lovely oxymoron: digital videos of books.

Rebecca Horn, full view of work shown top

Simryn Gill installation at Tracy William, New York; ABMB

Detail below

Judy Radul installation at Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver; ABMB

Detail below

Andrew Witkin at Theodore: Art, New York; Pulse

Jorge Mendez Blake at Galeria OMR, Mexico City; ABMB

Detail below

Oh, wait, this is not an installation; it's the dealers' table at Mary Boone Gallery, New York; ABMB

(Love those leather-bound diaries, though)

Richard Wentworth at Peter Freeman, New York; ABMB

The work is called Algebra and Geometry, and individual pages from math books are crumpled inside the jars

Installation view below

Loris Cecchini at Galerie Rodolphe Janssen, Bruxelles; ABMB

In this relief installation, there appears to be fabric stretched over an armature (of actual books?) which is then painted white; detail below

Installation at Now Contemporary, Miami; Art Miami

Just your average reading-is-fundamental installation where the figures are perusing volumes, dropping trou and fellating snakes; detail below

Jonathan Monk at Casey Kaplan, New York; ABMB

Found books with drawn graphite additions, under plexi; two in detail below .

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Luis Molina Pantu at Faria Fabregas, Caracas; ABMB

I'm pretty sure this literary lineup of dictators under plexi is composed of actual books; two in detail below

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Daniella Comani at Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles; Pulse

I showed you these in the Pulse post. Comani has recreated a library of books covers, with a gender twist; two in detail below

  Can you read this one? It's The Non-Existent Knight, with a gender change possible only in a language with genders--here il to la 

 

Ryan Brown at Y Gallery, New York; NADA

More fake books; two in detail below

 
 
 

Jean Lowe at McKenzie Fine Art, New York; Aqua Art

Love these: Biblical Family Values, The Jesus Workout, What Would Satan Eat?

Closeup below

Micah Lexier, Set of Seven Siblings, at Birch Libralato, Toronto; Aqua Art

Fernanda Fragateiro at Galerie Elba Benitez, Madrid: ABMB

Terry Maker at Robichon Gallery, Denver; Aqua Art

Jim Hodge at CRG Gallery, New York; ABMB

Detail below: seems to be gilded shopping-bag paper

Anri Sala at Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris; ABMB

Guillermo Kuitka at Caroline Nitsch Projects, New York

Above: nice view of the booth installation with Louise Bourgeois/Tracy Emin drawings on the right wall, and Bourgeois's pink marble house, which I showed in closeup here 

Below: View of Kuitka's Der Fliegende Hollaender, with dye-printed silk pages, each water manipulated by hand, bound in horsehair, edition of nine variants

Christopher Russell at Luis de Jesus, Los Angeles; NADA

This was one of a very few textual narratives I saw. The handmade volume, above, was editioned in a printed version; page detail below

John Fraser at Roy Boyd Gallery, Chicago

There were not as many altered books as I would have expected, but I found a good selection. Fraser's are not so much altered as deconstructed

Jessica Drenk at Conrad Wilde Gallery, Tucson

Above and below:  Brian Dettmer at Packer Schopf Gallery, Chicago: Pulse

Richard Wentworth at Peter Freeman, New York; ABMB

This book is not so much altered as assaulted.  Ya gotta love the wildness of it, no? Wentworth also had the installation of math-book pages in jars shown earlier in this post

Lauren DiCioccio at Jack Fischer Gallery, San Francisco; Aqua Art

This is the artist who embroidered the two-dollar bill in the previous post; detail of her notebooks, below

Michael Russell's recombinant volume at Toomey Tourell, San Francisco; Aqua Art

Sandow Birk at Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco; Pulse

Steve Wolfe drawing at Luhring Augustine, New York; ABMB

Thomas Broadbent drawings at Eyewash Projects, Brooklyn; Aqua Art

Kathrin Sonntag photographs at Galerie Kamm, Berlin

View of one below

Brandon Lattu manipulated photograph at Leo Koenig, New York; NADA

Below: view into the booth to give you a sense of scale

Artist unknown to me at Ginocchio Gallery, Mexico City

Paintings of magazine covers, and the covers themselves

Below: one of the paintings

Miler Lagos at Magnan Metz, New York; Pulse

Covering the spectrum of printed matter, here with pleated newspapers; detail below

Michal Rovner at Galerie Haas & Fuchs, Berlin; ABMB

Rovner's digital projections might be described as Paleolithic Contemporary. In her "book" on what may or may not be actual stone, detail below, tiny human figures in motion create the lines of "text." I wrote about her previously here

Ignazi Aballi at Galeria Elba Benitez, Madrid; ABMB

I love the connection between Rovner's projection and these photographs, individual image above; installation view below--photographs of a digital image of a reader projected onto a book. The series is called Doble Lectura

Tim Tate at Projects Gallery, Philadelphia; Red Dot

I'm giving Tate the last word here. As you can see from the detail below, that word (whatever it is) is being typed on a vintage manual typewriter. Tate has neatly preserved a literary past while simultaneously projecting it into the future