In May of 2013, the Halsey Institute presented Rebound: Dissections & Excavations in Book Art, curated by Karen Paavola. The exhibition featured 5 artists who utilize books as subject matter and media for their artwork. To see more, click on each image.
Taiwanese native and current New York resident Long-Bin Chen is widely known for his art works in the United States, Germany, Taiwan, and China. Using paper as his preferred medium to work with, Chen creates works looking as though they are made of anything but paper. Through his works, he demonstrates eastern culture into western culture.
Learn more about Chen with this video commissioned during his residency at the Halsey Institute.
Long-bin Chen.
Long-bin Chen.
Through his work, Doug Beube forces readers to view a book non-linearly. He transforms books into sculptures as well as abstract forms. The way he creates the sculptures forces the viewer to absorb the information in a nonlinear form and makes ideas jump from one to another within the book.
Doug Beube.
Beginning with a book, Brian Dettmer uses knives, tweezers, pliers, and other surgical instruments as tools to carve one page at a time. For Dettmer nothing within the book can be predicted or relocated, only removed. He works with material already there to create something new.
Brian Dettmer.
Canadian native Guy Laramée starts with an old or vintage book, and then transforms it into a landscape. Laramée scrapes away at the books and by doing this he demonstrates the land process of erosion. Depicting different natural landscapes, Laramée utilized different books to “erode” or scrape away at the books and create those landscapes.
Guy Laramée.
Using Artforum as her medium, Francesca Pastine cuts, bends, manipulates, pulls, and digs her way through the magazines to create different topography. After incasing her work in a Plexiglas box, she is able to showcase all of her works as cultural relics. The works become a collaboration between Pastine and Artforum as well as becoming a subject of criticism and adoration rather than just a commentator.
Francesca Pastine.
-by Madelayne Abel, Halsey Institute intern