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SFAI140 - November 2016 - Yung-shan Tsou from Santa Fe Art Institute on Vimeo.
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exhibition poster
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Book Semiotics: A Book of Boxes — A Curatorial Work
When
I met my fellow artists at the Santa Fe Art Institute, I was
exhilarated by their creative capacity and the varied dynamics in their
works. Early exchanges inspired a collective book project. As a premise
we forged towards challenging the traditional format of bookmaking.
As a working parameter, a 16” square box conceptually serves as a
page for a book and each artist was given a box to make a contribution
to the project with. The artists were encouraged to develop their own
narratives with their box considering this context.
How will we read this new sequence? How does the reading of this
collective body of work change when offered the challenges of
sculptural form and installation space? How does this extend or
consider the historical format of books? What is my role as curator in
defining these new relationships that will be produced?
Examining and challenging the established structure of what a box
or book currently is incites liberation from functional or conventional
expectation. The outcomes produced are considered, experimental and
open.
If
the boxes are considered book pages, my curatorial role engages actions
of the editor. My role is to arrange the page order, to consider
optimal layout, it binding, audience impact and how best to present
this new work. During the photo documentation of the work, some complex
characteristics in the boxes were revealed, which informed the
installation direction. In this current exhibition scenario, the
installing is site-specific. The concrete row of lights in front of
SFAI echo the shape of the 16” box thus serves as the perfect pedestals
for the art. The structure of the building contains the exhibition in
the same way a binding protects the contents of a book. We have
collectively reconsidered the format.
I am very grateful to be a SFAI artist in residence, which has
afforded the opportunity to work on a book project with this creatively
radical group of artists. Their contribution for the exhibition
provides extended considerations to the book format vocabulary, and
extends the possibilities in bookmaking. It inspires me to continue to
rethink what a book can be and how reading can be experienced. Thank
you to my fellow artist for engaging with me in this process and
contributing so generously. I also hope all of our readers enjoy
engaging with this work as much as I do.
Yung-shan Tsou Edited by Jason Baerg November 30th, 2016
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