The integration of text, image and the book form has long been the focus of my work. My obsession with obsolete technologies has led to a conceptual interest in the genre of the “book as object.” Electronic reading devices and digital libraries now propel readers, however reluctantly, beyond the physical book. Imagine readers’ mix of angst and joy when scrolls were rendered obsolete by the codex book in 400AD. The pieces in this exhibition are selections from a group of sculptural books, in which the imminent demise of the traditional codex and its relegation to a historic, relic status is imagined.
In Trace Studies, the fossilized bones of open books—double leaves fixed in time and nearly picked clean—might be thought to memorialize the loss of the complex, intimate relationship of the reader to the book. The iconic form of the open book, usually an invitation to the tactile experience of turning pages—looking and reading—is denied by these objects, revealing mere traces of their past. Categorical titles for each wordless book chronicle the loose biographical narrative of a personal library of loss.