Bibliomania

BIBLIOMANIA

BIBLIOMANIA October 7 - December 11, 2011

Visual Arts Center of New Jersey

Acknowledgements

I

t is a pleasure to open our 2011-2012 exhibition season with the presentation of Bibliomania, a show that focuses not on the literary power of the written word, but rather on the visual potential of the book itself. As society becomes more and more comfortable with electronic media—seeing, communicating and absorbing information without the use of paper—it is not surprising that visual artists are co-opting the book to create new and powerful works in every possible artistic medium, many of which we have represented in this exhibition.

I am most grateful to the individuals and galleries who have lent works to our exhibition and to the artists who, through their remarkable creations, help us expand our audiences’ knowledge and appreciation of contemporary art in all its forms. I want to particularly thank our Curator, Mary Birmingham, for her dedication to crafting a new vision for the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey as we expand our educational value to the communities we serve throughout the tri-state region.

I would also like to thank our Exhibitions Manager, Katie Murdock, and my entire staff for their hard work and commitment to all that we do. I extend my special thanks to our Trustees who continue to support us in all of our efforts.

Marion Grzesiak Executive Director, Visual Arts Center of New Jersey

Bibliomania Richard Baker Thomas Broadbent Ryan Brown Joy Garnett Nina Katchadourian Brandon Lattu Bjรถrn Meyer-Ebrecht Abelardo Morell Mickey Smith Jude Tallichet

The Materiality of Books: A Palpable Presence

by Mary Birmingham

T

he 20th century German critic Walter Benjamin—an unabashed bibliophile— explained his passion for collecting books in a famous essay from 1931 titled “Unpacking My Library.” He used the occasion of moving and unpacking his approximately 2000-book library from the boxes in which it had been stored to explore his thoughts about the process of collecting. Rather than pointing out the highlights of his library or discussing the contents of his books, he offers “something more palpable than that; what I am really concerned with is giving you some insight into the relationship of a book collector to his possessions…”1 By calling our attention to his books as “possessions”and relating his experiences in acquiring them, Benjamin emphasizes the book as a material object. His choice of the word “palpable” is especially noteworthy, as it makes us aware of the book as a tangible thing to be touched and possessed.

In a similar way the artists in Bibliomania also choose “something more palpable than that” in approaching their subject matter. Each of these ten artists depicts the book as a physical object and uses its palpable presence to explore deeper ideas. Some focus on specific elements—covers, spines, titles or pages. Some look at books in context, examining how and where they are arranged. Others subtly alter the appearances of books, subverting our expectations and assumptions about them. What is significant is their common representation of books as objects possessed and used by people— and that often carry the traces of those anonymous users.

Our understanding of what constitutes a book is facing profound change in the digital age: Do we define a book by its content or by its physical presence? The shape and structure of the book has evolved over the last five thousand years, from the inscribed clay tablet (2500 BC - AD 100), to the papyrus roll (2000 BC - AD 700), to the codex, composed of leaves bound together between two covers (AD 100). Until recently, the biggest fundamental change in the history of the book was the shift from scroll to codex;

1

Walter Benjamin, “Unpacking My Library,” Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn, ed. Hannah Arendt (New York: Schocken, 1968), 59-60.

the magnitude of that shift may soon be eclipsed by the meteoric rise of the electronic book. According to The New York Times, by the end of 2010 the online bookseller Amazon.com was selling more e-books than print books, and its electronic reader, the Kindle, had become the best-selling product in its history.2 The inevitable transformation of the book from printed to digital format is the source of much current debate. As we wrestle with issues such as the future of the printed book, it is interesting that so many contemporary artists are featuring the book as subject matter—specifically, the codex-format of the printed and bound volume. While this form of the book is no longer the exclusive carrier of written content, it still draws the attention of artists, whose work often conveys the underlying anxieties of the society at large. They invite us to look at an object that seemed so permanent, but is now transitioning in both form and meaning. While the e-book dematerializes the book’s content, it is the materiality of the printed book that continues to attract many contemporary artists, including those in Bibliomania.

The strongest common thread connecting the works in this exhibition is that all of the books depicted have been used, and show evidence of that use; many even appear shabby. Mickey Smith’s scaled-up photographs of bound periodicals showcase their frayed edges and worn spines. Richard Baker’s gouache drawings faithfully reproduce the stains, creases and small tears on the covers of vintage paperbacks.

Ryan Brown, whose “books” are actually sculpted facsimiles, takes special care to convey worn and soiled surfaces. The loosened bindings, irregular edges and unevenly stacked pages of Abelardo Morell’s Two Tall Books evidence a long history of use. Brandon Lattu’s Library series digitally reproduces the covers of all the books in his home. Nina Katchadourian’s photographs record her own arrangements of books in various public and private libraries. The book covers portrayed in Thomas Broadbent’s watercolors have the warm patina that results from repeated handling.

Björn Meyer-Ebrecht’s sculptures incorporate actual used books. Joy Garnett placed books from her own collection on the streets of her neighborhood and documented their dispersal. And Jude Tallichet’s life-size bronze sculpture was cast from a mold of the collapsed bookshelf that held her personal collection of art books and catalogues.

Ironically, while the content of books becomes increasingly more accessible, artists seem to be paying more attention to books as material objects without directly referencing their contents. Often a part stands in for the whole. Words like “Time” and “Power” on the spines of books convey more than just the titles of periodicals; they imply qualities associated with history and the printed word. Letters fallen and scattered from a book’s pages hint at the vulnerability of the printed word. The

2

Claire Cain Miller and Julie Bosman, “E-Books Outsell Print Books at Amazon,” The New York Times, May 19, 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/technology/20amazon.html.

singular cover of a favorite book like Little Miss Magic can evoke memories of childhood reading. Without ever revealing the texts in these books, the artists empower the objects to speak directly to us.

Although the contents of nearly all of the books represented in Bibliomania remain hidden from the viewer, several artists in the show consciously “remove” the contents of the books altogether, or render them inaccessible. Brandon Lattu scans the outside surfaces of his books and digitally reconstructs only their covers and spines, creating a void where the pages were. Ryan Brown’s realistic sculptures look like books, but they can never be opened or read, and their titles are in fact subtle variations on actual book titles. Jude Tallichet’s art books are transformed into metal and frozen in time. Abelardo Morell and Thomas Broadbent are the only artists who give us actual glimpses of the pages inside books, although they veil the contents—Broadbent by removing any text from the pages and Morell by allowing reflected light to nearly

above: Mickey Smith, Collocation No. 2 (POWER) (installation view), 2005, archival inkjet prints on canvas, three 84 x 54 inch panels, Ed. of 3, photo courtesy of INVISIBLE-EXPORTS

obscure the printed image. In all of the works, books become objects of contemplation, with our awareness of the missing or hidden content lending them an aura of mystery.

The book in situ is an important theme of this exhibition, with several artists finding additional meaning in the places and ways books are stored and arranged.

Katchadourian, Morell and Smith have each spent countless hours mining the shelves of public and private libraries. Sometimes they examine the relationship that groups of books have to one another, even when those arrangements are random. Mickey Smith, for instance, photographs bound volumes of periodicals and journals in public libraries using only the available light, shooting them exactly as the last user or caretaker left them. Nina Katchadourian selects small groups of books and arranges them so their titles read sequentially; this aggregation of text transforms the books’ spines into sentences. Ryan Brown arranges his “books” on shelves to create the illusion of a library with its abundance of information—an abundance contradicted by the empty books. Brandon Lattu represents the furniture and surfaces on which his books rest with areas of flat color; in doing so he effectively neutralizes their locales and highlights the books as individual objects.

While it may not be the intention of any of these artists to objectify or fetishize the book through their artwork, some of the books they depict have a tangible physical presence that borders on the monumental. Björn Meyer-Ebrecht’s architectonic sculptures elevate individual books, and their overt reference to architectural subjects draws interesting parallels between books and buildings. Abelardo Morell’s tall books loom like twin towers, their stacked pages appearing as multiple stories. Mickey Smith’s mural-scaled arrangement of book bindings resembles an architectural memorial, and Jude Tallichet’s ruined bookcase is a monument to the ephemeral.

Like a nineteenth century romantic artist, Tallichet hints at civilization in decline. Since the book is a central element of civilization, to see it fallen and in distress is especially poignant and even melancholic. The cause of this catastrophe is not initially clear to the viewer; are we witnessing the aftermath of an earthquake, flood, or explosion? Is this a sublime metaphor for the future of books? It raises questions about the immaterial nature of the digital download that remains constant, versus the materiality of the printed book whose history is layered into and evidenced by its gradual deterioration.

What will happen to the palpable power of the book?

As we move forward with evolving technologies, how will we determine which books to hold onto and which to let go? Often our decisions about book ownership are determined by available space (never an issue with electronic books), or by events such as moving; moving books implies a commitment to keep them. It was an impending move that prompted Joy Garnett to give away part of her personal library. Over the course of three weeks, she arranged small groupings of books in public spaces in and around her New York City neighborhood, and, via social networking sites, invited the public to take them. Her photographs document the thirty-seven deposits she made as she “unpacked” her library in public.

In Walter Benjamin’s essay on unpacking his library, he declared “…ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects.”3 That all of the books portrayed in Bibliomania have been owned and handled by humans is apparent. This palpable quality is what differentiates the idea of the book from its physical nature.

Ultimately, the works in Bibliomania remind us that books are material objects charged with personal and cultural meaning, while challenging us to consider each book’s relative value. Writer Joshua Gaylord eloquently speaks to this issue, describing the value he has assigned to a particular book in his collection. His words hold weight for those of us who own (and love) books: …if in the future, it will become ever more common to enjoy reading without books, maybe it will become equally common to enjoy books without reading.

I have a copy of Gilbert Sorrentino’s Mulligan’s Stew on my bookshelf, purchased many years ago from a used bookstore. It is big and dusty, and the pages are yellowed. I’ve never read it, and something tells me I never will. But it’s there, and I like having it there, and many times I’ve taken it down and flipped through the pages and felt the thing to be eminently worthy as an object, even if unread. It has survived two relocations to different households, and I’m sure I’ll carry it with me for the rest of my life.

I know exactly where it lives on my bookshelves. Even if I were blind, I could lead you right to it.

There it is. It exists. There’s no question.

Like a living thing, it has a spine.4

3

Benjamin, 67.

4

Joshua Gaylord, “Enduring Literature,” The Late American Novel: Writers on the Future of Books, ed. Jeff Martin and C. Max Magee, (Berkeley: Soft Skull Press, 2011), 72-73.

Artists

Richard Baker Books have always been important to me—from the first set of World Book Encyclopedia in my childhood home, through my first jobs in bookstores, to my readings in college and beyond. They always contained promise, optimism, and desire. They empower, ennoble, entertain.

As physical objects they are powerful fetishes, icons, containers of every conceivable thought and/or emotion. We cart them from home to work on our commutes and they accompany us on vacations. We move them carefully packed in boxes from one domicile to another, from one phase of life to another.

They come to stand for various episodes of our lives, for certain idealisms, follies of belief, moments of love. Along the way they accumulate our marks, our stains, our innocent abuses—they come to wear our experience of them on their covers and bindings like wrinkles on our own skin.

above: Little Miss Magic, 2009, gouache on paper, 12 x 10 inches, courtesy of Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York opposite: Human Anatomy, 2009, gouache on paper, 12 x 10 inches, courtesy of Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York

Thomas Broadbent How do we separate the book as text from the book as an object? This is an important question that is becoming ever more relevant to librarians, historians and collectors, not to mention the general public. In my work I want to convey the importance of books as well as the sense of loss that has occurred with the advent of technologies such as smart phones, e-books and computers. From how we record data to reading a famous classic, the ways in which we acquire information are changing. Are we willing and able to save the printed word from extinction? How will electronic print media be preserved? My aim as an artist is not to fetishize the book but to point out its place at this pivotal moment in history.

above: Fall, 2011, watercolor on paper, 47 x 69Âź inches, courtesy of Front Room Gallery opposite: The Weight of Words, 2010, watercolor on paper, 30 x 22 inches, collection of Olivia Hadley Watkins; courtesy of Front Room Gallery

Ryan Brown My installations of sculptures and drawings represent shelves of books as collective knowledge. The images and text that form the covers are polemically charged but due to their diversity and abundance tell no linear narrative. The space opened up amidst these polarized points is a silent space that becomes new through each personal encounter.

A majority of the subject matter comes about through free association and is culled from my daily interactions, a novel, news article, a film or compelling conversation.

The online experience has also strongly influenced my recent work, and it is both an inspiration as much as medium. My work is a portrait of the meandering mind guided by intellectual interest and spontaneous desire. The path along this way is documented and represented through many historically recognizable faces appropriated from a wide array of sources; some new, some old, some real, some imagined.

above: Fear Eats the Soul (detail from Upbuilding Discourses) opposite: Upbuilding Discourses, 2011, acrylic, charcoal, ink, graphite, gouache, watercolor, plastic, metal on paper on wood, dimensions variable, collection of Betsy Holland; courtesy of Y Gallery

Joy Garnett Lost Library was a social media performance that took place over the course of three weeks (June 19 – July 6, 2011) in New York’s Soho district.

To begin, I posted the following announcement on my blog: I am sharing the library that I’ve been accumulating for 15 years by giving some of it away.

Every day I will pick a good window well in Soho, deposit some books, and immediately tweet the location with a photograph and the hashtag #LostLibrary.

These are books for people to browse and to take away if they like.

Documentation is archived on flickr and tweeted photos are posted to tumblr.

While utilizing popular social media networks (Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Typepad and Flickr), to announce the locations of books as well as to archive and share photographic documentation of the project, Lost Library’s central act of exchange—that of sharing the books themselves—is firmly anchored in the material world. As such, it offers food for thought about ownership and sharing in an age where we are increasingly encouraged to license our content (music, books, etc) as opposed to buying and owning it, thereby making us beholden to terms and conditions that very often legally or “physically” prevent us from sharing freely. Lost Library asks us to stop and ponder our new-found immateriality, and to consider what we might be losing as we leave behind the heft and inconvenience of so much printed matter.

top: #LostLibrary: S side Broome betw Bway + Crosby (assorted fiction), 2011, digital photograph documenting social media performance, 11½ x 14 inches framed, courtesy of Winkleman Gallery, NY bottom: #LostLibrary: NW corner Broome + Mercer, 2011, digital photograph documenting social media performance, 11½ x 14 inches framed, courtesy of Winkleman Gallery, NY

Nina Katchadourian The Sorted Books project began in 1993 and is ongoing. The project has taken place in many different places over the years, ranging from private homes to specialized public book collections. The process is the same in every case: culling through a collection of books, pulling particular titles, and eventually grouping the books into clusters so that the titles can be read in sequence, from top to bottom. The final results are shown either as photographs of the book clusters or as the actual stacks themselves, shown on the shelves of the library they were drawn from. Taken as a whole, the clusters from each sorting aim to examine that particular library’s focus, idiosyncrasies, and inconsistencies—a cross-section of that library’s holdings. At present, the Sorted Books project comprises more than 130 book clusters.

The Akron Art Museum in Akron, OH, commissioned a book sorting project in 2001, based on the holdings of the museum’s own research library. Their book collection had extensive materials and catalogs from various contemporary art exhibitions, as well as many large-format, hardback monographs. There was a special section on the business and fundraising side of museum administration. The books from the library did not circulate to the general public, and the library itself was so separate from the main exhibition areas that most visitors had no idea there was a library there at all.

When the sorting project was complete, thirteen book clusters were brought to the gift shop located behind the front desk and integrated into the displays.

top: Made of Iron (from the Akron Stacks), 2001, digital c-print with artist frame, 12½ x 19 inches, Ed. 2/5, courtesy of Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco bottom: Primitive Art (from the Akron Stacks), 2001, digital c-print with artist frame, 12½ x 19 inches, Ed. 3/5, courtesy of Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco

Brandon Lattu The Library images deal with my mixed feelings about the transformation of knowledge and materiality in the digital age. They are made in conscious association to Fox Talbot’s earliest images of stationary objects dating from the very beginning of photography, in particular the still life pieces from the 1840s to the 1860s. These pictures have always struck me with their straightforward quality, a kind of visual naming of objects in the world that is echoed by the title of his famous book, The Pencil of Nature. They utilize a declarative simplicity that soon wore away from the practice of photography, only to be taken up fifty years or so later in Duchamp’s presentation of ordinary objects. But, when first made, Talbot’s earliest photographic images must have seemed utterly remarkable due to their simultaneous creation across the complete surface of the picture plane as opposed to the sequential accumulation of hand-made marks that produced virtually all previous representational works.

These formative aspects of modernism continue to fascinate me: the continuity of naming through visual forms and the indexical simultaneity of photography. The Library pieces demonstrate these different ideas in several ways. Each piece is based on a photograph of a group of books such as a case or shelf. After long experimentation about how to deal visually with the material of the books, I decided to allow each book to be entirely represented by its cover, the cultural container for the information within. Every book was scanned on the surface of its front, back and spine, then these scans were individually digitally applied to the images of the bookcases. This made any visible words on the cover entirely legible but absolutely erased the materiality of the book as an object. So, in fact, were you to see the inside of a surface, you see the outside reversed. Since there is no materiality, there is also no inside, no rendering of the content at all. The works are printed at a size that makes the books the same scale as the originals. Each book is represented by an impossibly, evenly lit digital rendering of volume, with no suggestion of mass. So, on completion, they end up as quite peculiar things, with greater verisimilitude than a photograph, scaled and presented directly like a readymade, but painstakingly constructed from a sequence of marks in the manner of a painting.

opposite: Bedroom Case, 2007, type c print, 51¾ x 47¾ inches, Ed. of 6, courtesy of Leo Koenig Gallery

Björn Meyer-Ebrecht The presence of books in my studio has worked itself directly into my work and books themselves became a subject. I started to think of books as objects with their own architecture: Books function not unlike a building; the cover is the façade, which holds everything together, with its imprinted letters, ornamentation, the spine, and dustcover. Paperback books in turn have very clear architecture in their mix of image and typography. Books, like buildings, have an exterior presence, and an interior life. Like architecture, books are meant to raise expectations, emanate authority, hide secrets within, and promise a new and surprising vision of the world. But like building structures, as books age, deteriorate, or even vanish, they lose their value and meaning over time.

Old books may be cheap, defunct, and no longer useful—remnants from the proverbial “junkyard of history”—but they are also always collectibles and historical artifacts, fraught with aura and witnesses of their past. Including such a book as a physical object in a sculpture explores exactly this ambiguity. Propped-up on top of a wooden structure, the book, which has lost most of its practical use-value for us today, is the object that connects us to history in a very physical and concrete way.

above: Installation view of untitled sculptures, 2011, wood, paint, paperback book, dimensions variable, courtesy of the artist opposite: Untitled (Le Corbusier), 2011, wood, paint, paperback book, 28½ x 27½ x 8¼ inches, courtesy of the artist

Abelardo Morell Although Abelardo Morell is renowned for his innovative images made with a lensless camera obscura, his photographs of everyday objects are equally powerful. Since 1993 he has been photographing books, providing fresh perspectives with often poetic results. In A Book of Books, published in 2002, he commented on this important aspect of his artistic practice: “One day in 1993 I was looking at a book of works by El Greco. As I turned a page, its surface caught light from a window at a funny angle, changing a reproduction of a painting into a shimmering distortion. What I saw wasn’t El Greco anymore, but it was a beautiful new image nonetheless. I photographed this effect and was immediately inspired to find other ways of seeing books in a new light, so to speak. … One of the big pleasures of this project has come from spending a good amount of time looking at, holding, smelling, and reading a terrific number of skinny, fat, tall, pompous, modest, funny, sad, proud, injured, and radiant books. Of course, there are many more out there to be found, by anybody!

For me, the magic of these objects lies somewhere between a photograph of a book and the book itself; at times, I have been convinced that books hold all the material of life—at least the stuff that fits between an A and a Z.”1

1

Abelardo Morell, A Book of Books, introduction by Nicholson Baker, (New York: Bullfinch Press, 2002), afterword.

top: Pieta by El Greco, 1993, gelatin silver print, 20 x 24 inches, courtesy of Bonni Benrubi Gallery, NYC bottom: Two Tall Books, 2002, gelatin silver print, 20 x 24 inches, Ann & Mel Schaffer Family Collection

Mickey Smith Mickey Smith photographs bound periodicals and journals in public libraries. She explains her process: “Hunting for and photographing these objects is central to the creative process. The books and words are not touched, artificially lit, or manipulated—rather created by the librarian, found in the stacks, and positioned by the last anonymous reader. The focus is on simple, provocative titles that transcend the spines on which they appear to create conceptual, language-based, anthropological works.”

above: Collocation No. 13 (TIME II), 2009, archival inkjet prints on canvas, four 84 x 54 inch panels, Ed. of 3, courtesy of the artist and INVISIBLE-EXPORTS opposite: Collocation No. 13 (TIME II) (detail)

Jude Tallichet The idea of the library as a glorious compendium of human knowledge has been with us for millennia, personifying both the glory and the folly of our desire to know and master the universe. A good library presents itself as a kind of meta-history, its volumes, drawn from a span of intellectual eras, collectively form a temporally dynamic cultural portrait. In this context the maintenance of the library is equivalent with the maintenance of culture itself, and the broken library represents the loss of all; all knowledge, all norms of conduct, all life as we know it.

Now, as digitized information supplants books on shelves the library-as-object itself is an endangered species and consequently an object of nostalgia. The sight of a shelf of books reminds us that the concept of knowledge as a fragile, scarce commodity to be guarded zealously and pursued forthrightly is becoming increasingly obscured by information as commodity. Truth is drowning in a rising tide of truthiness. The ruined library is thus now a doubled exemplar of loss; the catastrophic loss of order and normality imposed by natural and manmade disasters, and the Information Age’s less dramatic, but potentially even more epochal alternation of the social order.

Part of my own brick and mortar library suffered the peculiar fate of being crushed under its own weight: One day the old wooden bookcase into which I had piled all of the oversized art books and catalogs I have acquired in a lifetime of bibliomania simply imploded. Pinned between a desk and a wall, however, the bookcase could not simply collapse into chaos. The top shelves pancaked down onto the lower shelves one after another, compressing and distorting themselves under their own weight, bowing out the sides of the mutilated bookcase. The result was sublime; a beautiful synthesis of life and death and knowledge and loss that came to me by accident.

The broken and scattered library is a kind of Acropolis of gorgeous ruin. In addition to the bookcase, single books are scattered about the site, extending the sculptural space and enlarging the message of decay and disaster from a single traumatic incident to that of a total system failure. Books are becoming as much an artifact as the ruins of the old warehouses, and, like all obsolete technologies, they become romantic objects.

opposite: Ruined Bookshelf, 2010, bronze, 83 x 48 x 19 inches, courtesy of the artist

Exhibition Checklist Richard Baker Herself Surprised, 2009

Gouache on paper 12 x 10 inches Courtesy of Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York

Human Anatomy, 2009

Gouache on paper 12 x 10 inches Courtesy of Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York

Little Miss Magic, 2009

Gouache on paper 12 x 10 inches Courtesy of Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York

The Location of Things, 2009

Gouache on paper 12 x 10 inches Courtesy of Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York

Thomas Broadbent Fall, 2011

Watercolor on paper 47 x 69¼ inches Courtesy of Front Room Gallery

Feeding Birds, 2010

Watercolor on paper 22 x 30 inches Collection of Patrick Way; courtesy of Front Room Gallery

The Weight of Words, 2010

Joy Garnett

#LostLibrary: Broome betw Wooster + WBway (Artforum 2009-10, after the crash..), 2011 Digital photograph documenting social media performance 11½ x 14 inches framed Courtesy of Winkleman Gallery, NY

#LostLibrary: Broome just west of Bway - books on govt secrecy…, 2011 Digital photograph documenting social media performance 11½ x 14 inches framed Courtesy of Winkleman Gallery, NY

#LostLibrary: NW corner Broome + Mercer, 2011 Digital photograph documenting social media performance 11½ x 14 inches framed Courtesy of Winkleman Gallery, NY

#LostLibrary: S side Broome betw Bway + Crosby (assorted fiction), 2011 Digital photograph documenting social media performance 11½ x 14 inches framed Courtesy of Winkleman Gallery, NY

Nina Katchadourian

Europe Now (from the Akron Stacks), 2001

Digital c-print with artist frame 12½ x 19 inches Courtesy of Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco

Watercolor on paper 30 x 22 inches Collection of Olivia Hadley Watkins; courtesy of Front Room Gallery

Made of Iron (from the Akron Stacks), 2001

Ryan Brown

Primitive Art (from the Akron Stacks), 2001

Acrylic, charcoal, ink, graphite, gouache, watercolor, plastic, metal on paper on wood Dimensions variable Collection of Betsy Holland; courtesy of Y Gallery

Sixteen Americans (from the Akron Stacks), 2001

Upbuilding Discourses, 2011

Digital c-print with artist frame 12½ x 19 inches, Ed. 2/5 Courtesy of Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco

Digital c-print with artist frame 12½ x 19 inches, Ed. 3/5 Courtesy of Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco

Digital c-print with artist frame 12½ x 19 inches, Ed. 3/5 Courtesy of Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco

Van Gogh (from the Akron Stacks), 2001

Digital c-print with artist frame 12½ x 19 inches, Ed. 2/5 Courtesy of Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco

Brandon Lattu

Untitled (Sowjetische Architektur), 2011 Wood, paint, paperback book 71¾ x 16 x 4¾ inches Courtesy of the artist

Bedroom Case, 2007

Untitled (The Ungovernable City), 2011

Computer Shelf, 2006

Untitled (Utopia or Oblivion), 2011

Dining Case (top), 2006

Untitled (Verelendung durch Architektur), 2011

Type c print 51¾ x 47¾ inches, Ed. of 6 Courtesy of Leo Koenig Gallery

Type c print 18¾ x 24¼ inches, Ed. of 6 Courtesy of Leo Koenig Gallery

Type c print 35 x 25½ inches, Ed. of 6 Courtesy of Leo Koenig Gallery

Björn Meyer-Ebrecht

Untitled (black/green/grey/red), 2009

4 book covers Approximately 20 x 103 inches installed Courtesy of the artist

Wood, paint, paperback book 56½ x 17½ x 18 inches Courtesy of the artist

Wood, paint, paperback book 54½ x 20 x 4¼ inches Courtesy of the artist

Wood, paint, paperback book 37¼ x 4½ x 18½ inches Courtesy of the artist

Untitled (Vorbild Amerika), 2011 Wood, paint, paperback book 31½ x 6¼ x 14¼ inches Courtesy of the artist

Abelardo Morell

Untitled (Demokratie in der Großstadt), 2011

Pieta by El Greco, 1993

Untitled (Gropius), 2011

Two Tall Books, 2002

Untitled (Le Corbusier), 2011

Mickey Smith

Wood, paint, paperback book 46¾ x 5½ x 22 inches Courtesy of the artist

Wood, paint, paperback book 57½ x 3½ x 10½ inches Courtesy of the artist

Wood, paint, paperback book 28½ x 27½ x 8¼ inches Courtesy of the artist

Untitled (Man’s Struggle for Shelter in an Urbanizing World), 2011 Wood, paint, paperback book 62 x 22½ x 5½ inches Courtesy of the artist

Gelatin silver print 20 x 24 inches Courtesy of Bonni Benrubi Gallery, NYC

Gelatin silver print 20 x 24 inches Ann & Mel Schaffer Family Collection

Collocation No. 13 (TIME II), 2009

Archival inkjet prints on canvas Four 84 x 54 inch panels, Ed. of 3 Courtesy of the artist and INVISIBLE-EXPORTS

Jude Tallichet Ruined Bookshelf, 2010 Bronze 83 x 48 x 19 inches Courtesy of the artist

Visual Arts Center of New Jersey Board of trustees

Staff

Rachel Weinberger, Chair Estelle Fournier, Vice Co-Chair Jenny Reinhardt, Vice Co-Chair Jim Welch, Secretary Sarah Johnson, Treasurer

Marion Grzesiak, Executive Director

Patricia A. Bell Marie J. Cohen Kelly J. Deere John J. DeLaney Ellyn Dennison Keith C. Dolin David McLean Victor Nichols Mary-Kate O’Hare Mitchell Radin Katherine Roessle Lacey Rzeszowski Laura Schaffer R. Malcolm Schwartz Pamela Shipley David Srere Elisa Zachary Paula M. Zamora

Founding Visionary William B. Nicholson

Honorary Trustees Sally Abbott Shirley Aidekman-Kaye Dr. Virginia Butera Millie Cooper Elizabeth C. Gump Marion Nicholson Joseph R. Robinson Roland Weiser

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