Review

A review of Altered Books

Linda Ekstrom, "Tale," Bible, thread, and ribbon, 110" x 3" x 3", 2002. Image: courtesy of the gallery

Artspace at Untitled
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
July 9 — October 9, 2010

It’s not often you hear the word “flashy” used to describe an exhibition of artist-books. Modest and unassuming might be more typical descriptors; the works' small size and intimate nature allow only one person at a time to engage with them. The objects on view in Altered Books at Artspace at Untitled gallery may not be large in scale, but they defy stereotype with their visual power, and their rich meanings command attention.

Cara Barer, "Torso (Rorschach)," archival pigment print on rag paper, 36" x 36", 2007. Image: courtesy of the gallery

Guy Larame, "Le Pont," encyclopedia and wood, 8 3/4" x 14 3/8" x 11 3/8", 2008. Image: courtesy of the gallery

Lynne Hendrick, "Your Worries Aren't Mine," book, rubber, glass lens, screws, and graphite, 8 1/4" x 5 3/4" x 1 1/2", 1999. Image: courtesy of the artist

The exhibition features multiple works by nine artists, and the objects are united in treating the humble book as a raw material to be transformed into sculptures with surprising presence. The type of book used for these metamorphoses varies from the increasingly outdated — old telephone books, medical textbooks, and atlases useful to certain historians only — to the still broadly relevant, such as children’s books and classic literature. For some, the contents of the book are irrelevant. Cara Barer’s photographs of the books she alters capture them from angles that prevent subject recognition, while Lynne Hendrick screws her books shut and appears to scratch their titles off in an effort to obscure the subject matter.

Linda Ekstrom, "Spherical Bible," altered Bible and cloth-bound box, 24" x 6" x 6", 1996. Image: courtesy of the gallery

For most of the artists, their choice of book provides a conceptual layer that adds meaning to the work. Linda Eckstrom’s sculptures provide the biggest punch because she uses the Bible as her source material. By slicing, shredding, and twisting pages from various versions of the Bible, she creates four compelling sculptures that seem to be at once about destruction and transformation, sacrilege and reverence. Spherical Bible consists of five paper balls made from cut-up pages of various books of the Bible. The spheres differ in size, reflecting the length of each book. While four of them rest in a clothbound box, the ball comprised of the Book of Wisdom sits on the pedestal outside. Random phrases remain visible on each ball, shrouding the full meaning of each book and hinting at the problematic nature of ideas that are taken out of context. Operating in a similar way is Tale, a sculpture consisting of shredded Bible pages in a form analogous to a bushy animal tail. In a play on words, she uses "tale" to connote narrative, implying a defiance of a single, literal interpretation.

Jennifer Khoshbin, "Donkey John Music Box," book sculpture, 6" x 5" x 1 1/2", 2009. Image: courtesy of the gallery

A conceptual thread in many of the works in the exhibition is the precarious future of books and the unintended consequences that may emerge from our e-reader age. Jennifer Khoshbin lightheartedly imagines a new use for books should they become obsolete by turning vintage hardcovers into music boxes. Guy Laramee does not aim to provide solutions in his work, but rather draws attention to what he perceives to be the problem — the erosion of culture. Laramee’s Le Pont consists of two stacks of four encyclopedias placed side by side on a wood block. The edges of the books have been sandblasted to create the appearance of undulating curves on an eroded mountainside. Not by accident, the craggy grooves of these carved pages resemble an archeological dig with each page layer evoking the perpetual cycle of past civilizations being replaced by new ones. By destroying actual encyclopedias to imply “progress” Laramee questions how advanced we’ve actually become.

On the surface, the act of cutting, drilling, and dismantling books may appear like malicious destruction, but the artists’ manipulation of these books ironically highlights their value. Altered Books reminds us to venerate books not just for the ideas contained in them, but for the wonderful, tactile quality of the form itself.

-re-

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