NINA KATCHADOURIAN Noguchi, 2021 (“Sorted Books” project, 2010 – ongoing) All photographs are: C-prints in a numbered edition of 8 + 2AP Sheet: 12 x 19 inches Frame: 13 5/8 x 20 1/8 inches Editions 1 – 5: $3,800; Editions 6 – 8: $5,800 *Prices above do not include shipping from New York; please allow up to 4 – 6 weeks for production Artist statement on Noguchi: In a 1962 interview, Isamu Noguchi said, “I always work with whatever medium is at hand. I don’t believe in sticking to one medium.”2 This has been my approach as well, and I’ve found that deliberately working with the limitations of the materials at hand has been productive for me. My ongoing project “Sorted Books” began in 1993 as an experiment that I undertook with a group of fellow graduate students in 1993, when we took over a friend’s parents’ house in the small coastal town of Half Moon Bay, in California, and made art for a week using only what we found in the house. I got interested in the couple’s books and spent a week rearranging them on the bookshelves. The basic rules of engagement have remained the same through many iterations of the project ever since: I limit myself to a particular collection of books and by organizing them into clusters so that the titles can be read in sequence, I construct phrases, stories, poems. I think of the project as a form of portraiture. Both through the books Noguchi collected and his writings about his own work, I was keenly aware of his own intense attention to what materials communicate. The most common misunderstanding about the “Sorted Books” project is that it’s only about language, and merely about the arranging of words. There is an absolutely elemental importance to engaging the books as physical objects: to consider height, width, heft, color, typeface, texture, gloss, damage, dust jacket. These things communicate in different ways than language can, and to me they are as big as part of how the images are “read” as the words on the spines or covers. I’ve seen paperbacks that are so banged up and mangled from reading that they look like they’ve been eaten alive, in fact, a reflection of the voracious way in which I imagined they had been handled. (Perhaps the most extreme
example I’ve encountered was in the personal book collection of William S. Burroughs, where a medical thriller paperback titled Nerve had been shot through the cover, the bullet still lodged inside). I’ve also encountered libraries where the books have been treated so carefully that you wonder if they’ve ever been opened—or, perhaps, the books are there to serve a future moment when one might be needed as reference. Noguchi’s books are kept in his two homes, in Long Island City, New York, and Mure, Japan. Adding to the complexity, during this project I was in Berlin, Germany. From my studio there, I worked with snapshots of the book spines from both book collections, pinning up color prints of them on a large wall. In this simulated library, I used my usual method: reading the book spines over and over, transcribing onto index cards the titles I thought might be useful, and then spending a great deal of time composing potential book clusters using the index cards. I sent some preliminary groupings to Kate Wiener, assistant curator, who pulled those books from the Long Island City shelves and sent me back snapshots. Since the books in the Mure library couldn’t travel, we ordered secondhand copies, matching the editions exactly, and worked with those books in Long Island City as well. The photo shoot was an eight-hour long Zoom session in Long Island City, with Kate and photographer Frank Oudeman arranging the books and making small tweaks based on my feedback as they screen-shared images I scrutinized in Berlin. I had seen Noguchi’s books in Long Island City once, but it was before I knew which books I’d be using for my project. This was the first time I’ve had to do the project remotely. It required Kate and Frank to be my eyes and hands, and to tell me not only what things looked like but felt like. Although technology made it possible to do this project in a surprisingly effective way, it was bittersweet not to have tactile contact with the books, which often teaches me so much. There is a fundamental question with every iteration of “Sorted Books” for me, and that concerns the “voice” employed in the book clusters. Do the book arrangements reflect the views and interests of the owner of the books, as if that person were talking? Or is it me speaking, but through the books? The Noguchi series leans more toward the latter, but I placed a lot of importance on including books that would point to the artist’s influences (there are five books on Brancusi, his teacher and mentor), his connection to poetry (Noguchi’s father was a poet, and Noguchi owned many books of and about poetry), and his important friendships (there are many Buckminster Fuller titles, and several books on Duchamp). I was struck by the number of books about health and fitness—something I hadn’t necessarily expected to find—and included these kinds of books in a variety of clusters. Noguchi read a lot about the ancient world, but he also collected a fair amount of popular, contemporaneous writing. Some of the most beautiful books concerned Japanese craft traditions (Origami, and the wonderfully titled How to Wrap Five More Eggs). Noguchi didn’t write much marginalia in his books, but in a paperback anthology of comical short essays (a book he didn’t get too far into), there are sketches in pen on the blank page facing the title page. They might be sketches for an Akari lamp or one of his endless columns, or perhaps ideas for a playground element. Even when reading about something completely different, it seems that sculpture was always on his mind.
Catharine Clark Gallery
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Ezra Pound in Italy in the series “Noguchi,” 2021 Ezra Pound in Italy A Month in the Country Da Vinci’s Bicycle The Life of Ezra Pound Risking a Somersault in the Air
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How to Wrap Five More Eggs in the series “Noguchi,” 2021 How to Wrap Five More Eggs Bamboo How to Make Origami Distortions Against Nature
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Leonardo in the series “Noguchi,” 2021 Leonardo Mozart and Salieri The Truants Making Faces On Art and Architecture
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Light on America in the series “Noguchi,” 2021 Light on America What the President Will Say and Do!! The Power Broker Inside the Endless House Wolf Eyes The Grabbing of the Fairy Laughter in the Dark
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Man in the Holocene in the series “Noguchi,” 2021 Man in the Holocene The Farewell Party Darkness at Noon A Time to Gather One Hundred Flowers Happy Times
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1984 in the series “Noguchi,” 2021 1984 Los Angeles The Nude Aerobics Myth
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Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth in the series “Noguchi,” 2021 Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth The Passport The Monkey’s Wrench Computer Slang Intuition Human Knowledge Mega-Nutrients For Your Nerves
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Rock Hunter’s Guide in the series “Noguchi,” 2021 Rock Hunter’s Guide Search Quarry Specks Matter
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The Drama of the Gifted Child in the series “Noguchi,” 2021 The Drama of the Gifted Child Listen, Rabbit Snowflake Dance To a Violent Grave
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The Joy of Sex in the series “Noguchi,” 2021 The Joy of Sex Side Effects Moods Mad Love Creation
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The Poetics of Space in the series “Noguchi,” 2021 The Poetics of Space Beginning of the Beginning Planete Planete Planete The Comb of the Wind The Secret Life of Plants Frogs & Others Humans in Universe
Catharine Clark Gallery
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This is Japan in the series “Noguchi,” 2021 This is Japan The Unknown Craftsman Radical by Design
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This Time of Morning in the series “Noguchi,” 2021 This Time of Morning Oh, My Aching Back Your Prostate The Unfashionable Human Body
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Whale Sound in the series “Noguchi,” 2021 Whale Sound Brancusi Brancusi Brancusi Brancusi
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What is Modern Sculpture? in the series “Noguchi,” 2021 What is Modern Sculpture? Brancusi Noguchi Marcel Duchamp Plays and Wins Why Duchamp The Third Dimension
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