David Garcia: Meaning, Metaphor and the Personal Library

Copenhagen-based architect David Garcia runs an eponymous studio which he calls "an experimental architectural platform" with an open door philosophy, encouraging collaborations with designers, artists and engineers.

"Archive" is three-part installation which explores meaning, metaphor and the notion of the personal library. was first exhibited at the Royal Danish Art Academy Fall Show in 2005. Garcia calls these installations "investigations on space and books. Its departure point is density and micro spaces, and a series of traditional relationships that humans have to books."


Archive I (midground installation above) is "a weight balance library. The reader's chair is elevated in proportion to the amount of books in the shelves." This is a witty take on the bourgeois tradition of book ownership and display as a signifier of status. The piece is also a commentary on the right to learn, and freely share information. The more books are removed from the shelves, and consumed, the lighter the library becomes. The reader becomes "well rounded" with the weight and importance of imparted knowledge , but paradoxically closer to being "well grounded", if the information is shared and not re-shelved.

Archive III (glimpsed in the background) is a "censored book stand. The books close suddenly if anyone approaches the reading stand." (Take that, DRM!)

Archive II is a "circular library for the nomad book collector, allowing the user to step inside, and walk away with half a ton of books."

"Private collections have existed for centuries, but when this is added to nomadic behaviour, curious contradictions arise; this is the area studied by Archive II. How can an individual travel with it’s own library, given that books are so heavy? This is something we can all relate to when moving house. Archive II is a nomadic library, a transport system and an intimate space. Inspired by ancient travelling libraries from the Far East, which visited courts and cities, Archive II transforms this into a personal space, where walking and reading coexist as refuge and transport." ( Cozy...there's an app for that!)

Garcia notes that in the 9 hours it might take to read an average novel, you'd be able to travel about 43 kilometers, dryly adding "If you read and walk, watch out for traffic." This gives new meaning to the dangers of texting while driving.

Archive II is owned and on exhibition at the University of Roskilde Main Library, designed by the firm Henning Larsen (Garcia is an associate of the firm). Photographs of this gorgeous building can be seen here.

The Future of Publishing

This video was prepared by the UK branch of Dorling Kindersley Books and produced by Khaki Films. Originally meant solely for a DK sales conference, the video was such a hit internally that it is now being shared externally. Make sure you watch it up to at least the halfway point, there's a surprise!.

Dearly Departed

David Mirvish Books has passed over to the other side. The end is now official, and so I give you three final offerings on book related art.

1): Barbara Balfour at Art Metropole


Luminous photographs of themed bookshelves.
Also, for a mere $15, an accordion-fold booklet that documents the 7 prints which constitute the installation. (refer back to on the benefits and virtues of collecting artist books). The booklet does not record the bookshelf titles, but the staff at Art Metropole will cheerfully print them out for you. Do ask: the titles are an explanatory essential to getting the full gist of Balfour's work.

Barbara Balfour: "Ex Libris, 2008"
Yellow Shelf
Writing Shelf
Characters
Doubles
Place and Time (Proust)
Everything
Death Shelf

2): Novel Ideas
: Oakville Galleries at Centennial Square
(opening later this week) 7 March 2009 - 31 May 2009.
Featuring works by Adam David Brown, Ian Carr-Harris, Brian Dettmer, Paul de Guzman, Alexandre Itin, Nicholas Jones, Georgia Russell, and Robert The.
This group exhibition--including key works from Oakville Galleries' permanent collection--celebrates a fascination with the bound page and its inclination towards artistic re-interpretation.
Some examples of Adam David Brown's altered books:



3) Book of the Dead of Amen-em-hat
Royal Ontario Museum: Feb 28 to March 10, 2009
The ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead has been conserved and will be displayed in its full beauty for the first time in over 2,300 years. It contains a collection of hymns, spells and instructions for the after-life.
Perhaps it also contains some advice for independent bookstores.

Two From Winnipeg

I was born in a small city which occupies the longitudinal centre of North America, aka Winnipeg. My family did not stay there for long, so I cannot (unfortunately) claim much connection. It as a place of extremes: it is either really, really cold or really, really hot. There are two seasons: Snow and Mosquito. It is not a place that suffers wimps gladly. If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. And so, it has become Canada's most unlikely and fresh cultural incubator.

Continuing my homage to Toronto's David Mirvish Books, here are two bookish offerings from Winnipeg:

1): "The Winnipeg Alphabestiary"


To celebrate their 25th anniversary, Border Crossings magazine commissioned twenty-six wacky, wild, and wonderful works from some of Winnipeg’s most accomplished artists. The "Winnipeg Alphabestiary" includes full colour illustrations of the twenty-six original works, a foreword by noted American artist and Weimaranerist William Wegman, and contributions by Meeka Walsh and Robert Enright. From Wanda Koop’s A for Ape to Shaun Morin’s Z for Zebra, the animals that dwell in the pages of the alphabestiary challenge, conjure and inspire.
Viva la W!

The artists, from A - Z:
Wanda Koop, Aganetha Dyck, Shawna McLeod, Erica Eyres, Doug Melnyk, Kim Ouellette,
Janet Werner, Tim Schouten, Simon Hughes, Michael Dumontier, Marcel Dzama, Andrew Valko, Drue Langlois, Daniel Dueck, Jon Pylypchuk, Eleanor Bond, Dominique Rey, Diana Thorneycroft, Neil Farber, Adrian Williams, Sarah Anne Johnson, Alison Norlen, Bonnie Marin, Cliff Eyland, Melanie Rocan, Shaun Morin.

2): Cliff Eyland



"Bookshelf File Cards"
Feb 21 - Mar 21, 2009
Leo Kamen Gallery

Cliff Eyland grew up and was educated in Halifax. He is a practising artist, curator, writer, and Associate Professor at the University of Manitoba School of Art in Winnipeg. Since attending Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in the early 80's, he has made paintings and drawings exclusively in a 3"x5" index card format. Eyland believes that the library is the most important of all art institutions. Libraries should be the key to what is shown in art galleries, he insists, whereas the galleries should illustrate what is in a library.

His systematic devotion to the file card format began with a Fluxus-inspired student project, when he cut a copy of H.H. Arnason’s "History of Modern Art" into 3 by 5 inch rectangles and surreptitiously inserted them at random in the NSCAD library's file card system. He has since done many other library installations and interventions, including an invited project spanning a number of years at the Fogelman Social Science and Humanities Library at New School University in New York, in which he placed file card-sized drawings in books throughout the library.

In "Bookshelf File Cards", Eyland reengages his lifelong obsession with books and art by creating abstract images of books on shelves. These works begin life as digital illustrations on paper, which are then mounted on blocks the thickness of a package of file cards. Some of the images remain as digital illustrations, some are painted over in whole or in part. These little gems want to be displayed in groups of 3, 6, 9 or more, making a miniature library. Eyland is a master of colour theory and human colour perception: the highly saturated combinations tickled my visual cortex in a delightful way. I wondered what might happen if the work was on a larger scale. My curiosity was satisfied, as he reproduced a number of pieces in the show as posters. However, the larger format simply does not work, proving that 3"x5" is just right.

Roula Partheniou

Ceci n'est pas une livre.
Roula Partheniou delights in books as objects, and loves the look of print. In 2005, she began her series of "Handmade Readymades", stretched canvases of the same dimensions as books, painted to replicate particular books.

These individual paintings of books evolved to loose sculptural stacks of paintings, wherein the books relate according to particular themes:
Partheniou's work was also featured in the series of three one-night exhibitions entitled "On Painting: History, Surprise, Restraint" curated by Richard Rhodes at last fall's Toronto International Art Fair. Partheniou's library-like installation held the "Surprise" spot in the series.



The work is indeed surprising, and witty, and attractive, and very collectible. But, like all good art, it can be read on several different levels. Initially the work appeals as a cheeky nod to the importance of language and punning humour in contemporary conceptual painting.

However, Partheniou has begun screwing her canvasses together, in order to create permanent sculptural piles. Now, not only are these books you cannot read, they are paintings you are are not allowed to see. She explains that the act of screwing the canvasses together has a queasy sense of finality for her, in that the paintings have now been defaced and further, will never be fully available to the viewer.
There is something about this rescinding act that reminds me of the twin myths of Pandora and Lilith. In Greek and Judeo-Christian mythology respectively, Pandora and Lilith were each first-created human women who were reviled and punished for their intellectual curiosity and strength . In the common versions of the myths, they were disobedient, and as a result, unleashed evil in the world. In other versions, what they did was to change human nature by acquiring and sharing the power of language. Partheniou's permanently unreadable sculptural stacks reminds me that language and literacy changes everything. Once emancipated by literacy and a free press, the only means of imposing absolute control upon social groups is through brutality or complacency... and in the latter case, we all get just what we deserve.

A small collaborative installation by Partheniou and Micah Lexier "Works, Works 1, Twice" can currently be seen at "Queen Specific", a vitrine gallery next door to (and sponsored by) Dufflet Pastries at 787 Queen St. West, Toronto.

Tom Phillips: A Humument

Thr grand-daddy of altered books would have to be British artist Tom Phillips' A Humument . In the mid-1960s, Phillips took a forgotten nineteenth-century novel, W.H. Mallock's A Human Document, and began working over the extant text to create something new.

" I plundered, mined and undermined its text to make it yield the ghosts of other possible stories, scenes, poems, erotic incidents and surrealist catastrophes which seemed to lurk within its wall of words. As I worked on it, I replaced the text I'd stripped away with visual images of all kinds. "

The revealed text on the page reproduced above reads as follows:

a door opened
on a glitter of fanciful
passages and rooms.
on the net (the net)
his mean
mosaic and
suite of
night
routine

Over the past four decades, Phillips has continued to revise and re-work A Humument. A version of it can be had as a paperback book, and as a small hardcover miniature.

Phillips also maintains a blog, in which he writes about his creative process. Here is a passage that is fascinating from a neuropsychological perspective:

"At art school we worked in silence. When eventually I graduated to independent studio life it occurred to me that listening to music would enhance the day: my LPs of Beethoven and Bartok string quartets could be just the thing. I was wrong. If I listened I stopped painting and if I painted I failed to listen, hearing just the first few familiar bars but only becoming aware of the piece again as the final cadence gave way to the hiss of needle on vinyl.

But priorities are priorities and I was always able to pay attention to the Test Match commentaries. Far from hindering concentration the spoken word seemed to take up the slack of a brain that would otherwise have inwardly burbled on about money and quotidien anxieties. When rain stopped play it was a double blow, although, as in winter, there was always BBC drama to look forward to after lunch. "

I cannot resist adding this tidbit: In the 60's Phillips taught at the Bath Academy of Art, where one of his students was Brian Eno.

Artist Books from Art Metropole

This week, all posts will be bookish, to honour the final days of David Mirvish Books.

Collecting artist books is an interest of mine, and since these books are often fabulously inexpensive, it always surprises me to find that some of my favourite editions are not sold out.

I have three books to suggest, and you can own them all for less than the price of a very cheap dinner out. Eat at home, and buy some art!

All are available at Art Metropole, itself a landmark institution in Toronto. They celebrate their 35th anniversary this year. Visit in person, or online.

Book #1:

Stephen Andrews, Three Hundred Sixty Five Pictures, 1998
$40.00
"A beautiful and thoughtful collection of the artist's works frm 1994 to 1998. 17 b/w tipped-in images plus one unique Fingerprint portrait included with every copy. These drawings reflect on the resilience of the human spirit undaunted by the challenges of time, love and loss. Includes "Sonnets", "Album", "Fingerprints", "Personals" and "Crosswords" pieces. Essay by Cheryl Sourkes."
(Update: No longer available at Art Metropole)

Book #2:
Barbara Balfour, M, 1998
$10.00
"Artist's book bringing together the psychological and somatic states of skin cancer and melancholy, linked etymologically to the word melanin. Includes autobiographical texts written by the artist. English and French texts with b/w images printed on sandpaper and mushroom speckled paper."

Book #3:
Katie Bond Pretti, Sonority of Words, 2007
$15.00
"Three chapters designed to develop a narrative as the drawings progress from beginning to end. Though not containing any literal message, the lines and shapes which form each drawing direct the viewer through a sequence of events. Similar to way in which the letter-symbol elements of sound poetry necessitate that the viewer forms their own associations, this story depends upon handmade marks to express dynamics and intonation. The format of the book echoes the linear theme featuring fold-outs to accommodate larger and continuous images, while its scale maintains intimacy."

David Mirvish Books

Seven days and counting. On February 28, David Mirvish Books will close its doors forever. For 38 years this Toronto bookstore has been the place for books on art, design, architecture and related fields. As independent bookstores often are, it has also been a community hub, a place for surprise encounters with art, books, ideas and people that made you think.

To honour that history, for the next week, posts to this blog will be bookish.

A wonderful Frank Stella has graced David Mirvish Books for years. I hope we will be lucky enough to see it on public display elsewhere in the future.


To visit the David Mirvish Books website, click here.

Must-See Exhibition

This child is lost in the quiet, personal, and tactile, act of reading. He's made a nest of his newspapers, and is absorbed in a way that can never quite be achieved with the digital "equivalent". This series photographs (by the incomparable Andre Kertesz) was made between 1915 and 1970. The photographs were also published as a book ("On Reading") which has recently been re-printed.

Andre Kertesz: "On Reading"
Stephen Bulger Gallery
Feb 7 to March 7, 2009