"A coffee shop latte easily costs six dollars or more these days, but peruse any used book sale and you'll find classics of literature and science for mere cents-published works that have had an indelible impact on culture. In many cases, mass production has rendered the value of books-as objects-at pennies. Used bookstores with buy-back policies often play a vital role in simply being able to properly recycle or dispose of volumes that are no longer salable."
"In the artist's solo exhibition, In·Formation at Riverside Arts Center, work made over the past few years explores collage and sculpture through the medium of books. From cut-up elements interwoven into wall reliefs to freestanding forms made from carving directly into thick tomes, Dettmer highlights the afterlife of hardcover publications like dictionaries, atlases, guides, and other reference titles. He often meticulously splices elements together to create layered, stacked, and diorama-stuffed assemblages."
Used book sales often offer classics for mere cents while everyday items like lattes cost several dollars, revealing a disparity between monetary and cultural value. Mass production has reduced books' material worth, and used bookstores with buy-back policies help recycle or dispose of unsalable volumes. Hundreds of millions of books are discarded yearly due to overstock, age, or damage, creating a sustainability problem for publishing. Obsolete reference genres present reuse challenges. Artist Brian Dettmer repurposes out-of-date reference books into collage and sculpture, carving and splicing tomes into layered assemblages that expose hidden texts and images, suggesting new information.
Read at Colossal
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]