3/30/07

artists' books

Space Other is a gallery in the South End that focuses on innovative contemporary art. I had visited it before during open studios and enjoyed the video art they had up at the time. So when I saw in the paper that they were exhibiting book art, I was intrigued. Book art is one of my favorite media to interact with - it extends the whole idea of reading, which I love anyway. The show, "Artists' Books: Transgression/Excess", ends tomorrow.

Some of the books were really boxes that one opens to examine the contents, one "book" was really a clay object made to look like a book. There was a series of books that was completely blank - white pages, white covers. The interesting thing was that behind it were some photos of an entire library of books like that. It made me imagine a world where everything has really been wiped clean. Kind of chilling, actually.

There was a set of chapbooks bound in cardboard that I found very cool. The covers were painted as well. I wish I had taken pictures. They were made in Peru by a group called Sarita Carbonera, whose website is interesting, but more so if you speak Spanish.

Another piece that I liked was more of a regular book by a concrete poet named Emmett Williams, who I had never heard of. What I liked about it was that the poems really played with words and language as if they were silly putty. I wish I had gotten the title. One of the poems used the old English letters ð and þ, which represent the 'th' sounds in English. Well, I think that stuff is neat.

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