As in great literature, book art has a self contained logic, one that is personal to the world of the book and the person that creates or inhabits such a world. An "art" book is part recycled fantasy and outsider logics, the resultant landscape imbued with Cornell-esque mysteries ripe for dramatic unlocking. While a certain level of escapism is undeniable, the lo-fi charm and familiarity of a cannibalized book is essentially confrontational when dealing with the acts of interpretation and meaning through the canonical. Artists transform books from one physical state to another, dissolving readable text into new narratives of objectification, content, authorship, etc, that refer to a whole body of literary theory a la Barthe, et al.
Below are literal takes and deconstructed fantasies of books by very different artists.
Literary art remains demurely contained within the spaces of the book bindings. The reveal of pages and their edges is a query of that boundary but also a question about how boundaries themselves can be reinterpreted.
The remade object is a dialogue with the text that reframes subject as a constantly shifting body of knowledge - a conversation that at once edifies and questions language and cultural significance.
Imagination leaps to escape the constraints of the form, bringing the literal page to life.
As curio and dissection piece, the physicality of the object and its content transcends the temporal life of the book, the reclaimed study of the reclaimed artifact being an act of entropy that also one that insists upon reincarnation as well.
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