• Meetings with Remarkable Women •
A transdisciplinary multilayered livre d’artiste integrating plural systems of representation.
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Meetings with Remarkable Women, the Red Book, is a numbered livre d’artiste, a one-sided epistolary at the junction of sculpture and visual narrative across the 7 dimensions of the feminine soul gathered from encounters with real women. It mingles the written text with an underlying subtle content surfacing here and there in non-linear fashion to distract a focused attention, an illusory itinerary of self-knowledge, autobiographic, slightly erotic, poetic, with excerpted guests drawn from the history of art. Printed on demand in 77 copies, casting the plot into 77 unbound pages illuminated by hand with silver and golden leaf.
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A quest to
We,
a legendary being.
A soul itinerary across Death & Rebirth of the erotic rasa,
and who knows what else.
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At the intersection of Eros & Logos,
Binding the Unbinding,
Awakening
Us.
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A livres d’artiste (or “artists’ books”, “book art”, “bookworks”, “fine press books”, etc.) is a medium of artistic expression that uses the form or function of “book” as its formal reference to challenge the idea, content and structure of the traditional book and push the boundaries of creativity. It is an art object shaped by the creation process, by the choice of materials, text, illustration, layout and design. It can be made through fine press printing or hand-crafted, the pages may be illustrated with computer-generated images or collage; made from all kinds of resources, incorporating unconventional objects, and it can become a small or big sculpture.
Livres d’artiste are at the intersections of printmaking, photography, poetry, experimental narrative, visual arts, graphic design, and publishing. They have caught the interest of art historians and art critics, even though there are few scholarly texts dedicated to the medium. They are often produced as a one-of-a-kind art object or in multiple copies, published in unique or limited editions. They are found in the collections of museums, libraries and bibliophiles[1].
• Le Livre •
Signed limited edition of 90 original copies: 77 numbered in arabic numerals from 1/77 through 77/77 for musea, bibliophiles & private collectors; 7 épreuve d’artiste horse commerce with roman numbers from I/VII to VII/VII; and 6 copies for the collaborators lettered from A to F.
It comprises:
The Matrix, a transparent exoskeleton of 0,35 x 0,35m made out by folding in 8 sections a single sheet of 1,64 x 0,35 x 0,8 m of clear acrylic glass (PMMA) so to shape up a cube with front and back open faces, and a yoni in the middle.
In Hinduism, the yoni (Skt: lit. abode, source, womb, or vagina) is the female genitalia, a sacred space symbol of the goddess Shakti, the creative feminine power that moves through the entire universe. In Shaivism, the branch of Hinduism devoted to worship the god Shiva, the yoni is often associated with the lingam (Skt: lit. sign, symbol, or mark), the symbol of Shiva, the male creative energy, depicted as a phallus or phallic object representing the axis mundi, the cosmic pillar, emanating its all-producing energy to the four quarters of the universe, iconographically rendered as resting in the yoni as a cylinder in a spouted dish. The lingam and the yoni together represent the eternal process of creation and regeneration, the union of the male and female principles, and the totality of all existence.
At the intersection of the Y, a red pearl sits in unstable stance. On the horizontal plane of symmetry of the Matrix, The Red Book. On the lower plane, a pair of white gloves in a mirrored mudrakhya mudra.
Mudra (Skt: lit. seal) is understood as an inscriptive form that follows the linguistic parameters, expressing symbolic meaning through systematically codified patterns. Mudras are hand gestures adopted during yoga postures (asana) and breath control (pranayama) and in some form of meditation direct the flow of energy into the subtle body. Beyond the level of linguistic symbolism, mudra is a kinetic energy, essentially the form of a movement whose meaning is embedded in the kinetic modalities of the hands. A mudra is an entity composed of a number of spatiotemporal properties such as tempo, duration, rhythm, motion trajectories of the hands and eye movements. Mudra is the ‘optical’ dispositive of the hand, it sees things, relates events, interprets their meanings and experiences in a range of emotions through movements. In a theatrical performance, the mudra connects the subjective and objective realities through the kinetic properties of the hands. The Mudrakhya mudra, performed with forefinger and the thumb joined and the others released, symbolises the harmonious fulfilment of growth.
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[1] For more general information on livres d’artiste:
Bury, Stephen. Artists’ Books: the Book as a Work of Art, 1963-1995. Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1995.
Castleman, Riva. A Century of Artists Books. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1994.
Drucker, Johanna. The Century of Artists’ Books. 2nd ed. New York: Granary Books, 2004.
Perrée, Rob. Cover to cover: the artist’s book in perspective. Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2002.
Artists’ Books: a critical anthology and sourcebook. Ed. Joan Lyons. Rochester: The Visual Studies Workshop Press, 1985.
Artist/Author: Contemporary Artists’ Books. Eds. Cornelia Lauf and Clive Phillpot. New York: Art Publishers Inc., 1998.
The Artist and the Book in Twentieth-Century Italy, Catalogue exhibition. Ed. Ralph Jentsch, New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1992 — featuring also Sahlan Momo De Marginis Sophia in the MoMA collection.
The Journal of Artists’ Books
The Bonefolder
Printed Matter
