Artists' Books | Publications | Related Works

Exhibition Dates: December 12 - February 27, 2016

Pages : Artists' Books | Publications | Related Works is a group exhibition that features artist’s books and publications alongside a selection of editioned photographic prints they contain. Included in Pages are artist’s books by Paul Turounet and Ian van Coller, and recent publications by Jennifer Greenburg and Guillermo Srodek-Hart.

Books are traditional vehicles for artistic expression; they are intimate and implicative. Our viewing is dependent on our engagement- it is only our turning of the pages that activates them. This physicality helps us connect to the artists’ intention in a special way. Artist’s books are arguably among the most critically curated viewing experience an artist can offer, as the viewing-order is both calculated and fixed. Publications are major honors for artists; they collate bodies of work, often drawing a whole oeuvre together into one object. This contemporary art gallery exhibition celebrates both artists books and publications.

Paul Turounet’s photography along the US/Mexico border has inspired the artists’ books Tierra Brava and Bajo la Luna Verde. Both Turounet’s handmade books are challenging and critical; they alter our relative position, and we find ourselves sliding into the role of the photographer or subject. Turouet photographs his travels and the people he meets on the road, among them are citizens, fellow travelers, migrants, coyotes, and would-be US-illegals.

Ian van Coller is a white South African who grew up during apartheid; much of his work relates to this childhood experience as well as the guilt associated with this and a greater colonial legacy. In Mali Monuments van Coller celebrates the existing beauty, spiritual, even holey nature of the land and people of the West African nation he documents. For van Coller, these fine art portraits of “African Monuments” are distinguished from the imposed and constructed European monuments he grew up learning about.

Jennifer Greenburg’s The Rockabillies was published by the Center for American Places, Chicago in 2009, and is nearly sold out. Our gallery will offer a special reserve of signed copies. Greenburg’s Rockabillies photograph series documents a sub-culture of America. It is hard to believe the people in Greenburg’s images are not archetypes, but it is true: this is the everyday life of her subjects. The choices of what the followers idealize is as interesting as their complete dedication to the bygone period.

Stories by Guillermo Srodek-Hart was released by Prestel earlier this year (2015); the work traces more than 10 years of work by the Argentinian photographer. Widely exhibited in the USA and abroad, Srodek-Hart exhibited in the 55th Venice Biennale, and is in the collections of the Danforth Museum of Art, Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts, Fundación Klemm, Fundación Petrobrás, North Dakota Museum of Art, and Santa Barbara Museum of Art, among others. His work saves places from being lost to time, at least in photographic-form. The shops, bars, and other interiors he turns his camera on are rustic and worn, but beautiful, for they are free of the shinny trappings of contemporary consumer-hungry culture.