new york bound: interational book art biennial

NEW YORK BOUND:
INTERATIONAL BOOK ART BIENNIAL
September 22 – December 29, 2013
Reception: October 6 from 1 – 4 pm
Anna Marie Akdine Garzon, Rosaire Appel, Eileen Arnow-Levine, Aileen Bassis, Fernando
Barredo de Valenzuela, Ronald Beetz, Andrei Budescu, Sabrina L. Cacciatore, Patti Capaldi,
Darlene Charneco, Guyang Chen, John Cino, Andrea Cismasiu, Suzanne Coley, Pam Cooper,
Anne Covell, Elena Cristea, Katherine D. Crone, Paz Die Dean, JoAnne Dumas, Evelyn Eller,
Ronald Gonzalez, Viktor Goppe, Daiva Gudelyte, Carmella Gullo, Karoly Gyongyi, Bernard
Hallstein, Sarah Hogan, Ani Katz, Christine Kertz, Velimir Khlehnikoy, Andor Komives, Valery
Korchagin, Beata Kruk, Aimee Lee, Dawn Lee, Sue Huggins Leopard, Viktor Lukin, Leslie
Madigan, Traistaru Mirela, Lauren Monte, Ayano Mouri, M. Abou el Naga, Sarah Nicholls,
Leslie Nobler, Leah Oates, Poti Orsolija, LuAnn Palazzo, Zsoka Paqyi, Chris Perry, Jussara
Pires, Mikhail Pogarsky, Ben Rinehart, Maria Macedonio-Ritter, Jenna Rodriguez, Kara Rooney,
Rocco Scary, Leonard Seastone, Norman Shapiro, Carolyn Sheehan, Rosemary Wilson Sloggalt,
Meryl Spiegel, Balog Stefan, Tamar Stone, Vasile Tolan, Bianca Tschainter, Monica Vasinca,
Susan Viguers, Patrick Vincent, Mezouar Wafaa, Ellen Wiener, Mancia Widenor, Thomas
Parker Williams, Tmima Z, Mou Zhu, and Szemak Zsuzsa
Once upon a time there was a world where writing was unknown. A world different from ours,
but human nevertheless. Everything changed once writing was invented, but maybe the writing
was only revealed to humans and not invented by them. It is certain that for thousands of years
writing was the secret recipe of spiritual texts guarded by royalty or the keepers of sacred
knowledge. Beyond its content, writing has an exterior, a visual feature. Transposing or
"packaging" the idea into text implies an infinite variety of shapes and materials; in this way the
writing and the book become an art object. A book is more that the content it holds; its physical
structure and visual impact are also part of it. In some oriental traditions, calligraphy was
considered a spiritual pathway.
We live in a time where the book is on the way to disappearing and will be replaced by the
electronic (visual or auditory) book in a couple decades; perhaps the book will no longer exist in
paper form, but this is not the only motivation for many artists to create book art. The reasons
are are as diverse as human life. They are a conglomerate of emotion, knowledge, rationality,
motive, search, randomness, fascination, admiration, passion, rationalism, sense of time,
romance, education, ritual healing, documentation, identity and more, as if taken from a
randomly compiled library with required reading and individual preferences, contradictory to
each other and each complementary.
Another reason is also, and above all, a strong love for the book itself, belief in a time when
technologists and progressive believer freaks think they could cause an end to the time-honored
book via the "information highway" and "cyberspace". That would mean the end of a cultural
good, probably the one next to the invention of the wheel, to the most important people of all.
Hardcover books would have thus accompanied and served us for several centuries. In all these
centuries artists and unique books were always absolute specifics, what times, fashions, and eras
survived (Multerer 2004). Even today they are rare contemporary documents independent of
quality, time, canned food, more than just books. They are documented in their lifetime; they are
pure, dense, immortal substance.
In contemporary visual art there is no specific division as such between the artbook/diary painted or written, but, metaphorically, the diary of an artist is his whole creation because every
artist creates his own journal/diary, which transposes his physical state of mind and embodies a
part of his soul, constantly influenced by specific moments in life.
The art book reproduces the intimate and complex artistic experiences of an artist and lets people
deep into the imagination of the artist, but at the same time reflects little of the private, intimate,
and secret life of the artist.
In the last decades, we experienced a rebirth of the book art as unicate/book object and spreading
widely in the last two decades of theoretical debates and practical experimental "production",
turning exhibition in the cultural and media promotion of the book-object, respectively, the
specific identity of this relatively new type of art object produced, debates and experiments that
record in the area of promoting international artistic and cultural goods of topical recovery.
"Bookart/bookobject/artist journal", through direct public confession, pitch a profound sense of
the creator and actually represent contemporary art the art at the beginning of the XXI century.
Dorothea Fleiss, Curator
Aileen Bassis, USA
Anna Marie Akdine Garzon, Morocco
Fernando Barredo de Valenzuela, Spain
Rosaire Appel, USA
Andrei Budescu, Romania
Eileen Arnow-Levine, USA
John Cino, USA
Sabrina L. Cacciatore, USA
Pattie Capaldi, USA
Andrea Cismasiu, Romania
Suzanne Coley, USA
Darlene Charneco, USA
Elena Cristea and Balog Stefan, Austria
Pam Cooper, USA
Katherine D. Crone, USA
Anne Covell, USA
Paz Die Dean, Spain
Viktor Goppe, Viktor Lukin, Valery Korchagin,
Russia
JoAnne Dumas, USA
Evelyn Eller, USA
Carmella Gullo, USA
Ronald Gonzalez, USA
Karoly Gyongyi, Romania
Bernard Hallstein, USA
Sarah Hogan, USA
Christine Kertz, Austria
Velimir Khlebnikov, Russia
Ani Kartz, USA
Andor Komives, Romania
Sue Higgins Leopard, USA
Beata Kruk, USA
Leslie Madigan, USA
Aimee Lee, USA
Traistaru Mirela, Romania
Dawn Lee, USA
Lauren Monte, USA
Sarah Nicholls, USA
Ayano Mouri, Germany
Leslie Nobler, USA
Leah Oates, USA
M. Abou el Naga, Egypt
Chris Perry, USA
Poti Orsolija, Romania
Jussara Pires, Brazil
LuAnne Palazzo, USA
Mikhail Pogarsky, Russia
Zsoka Paqyi, Hungary
Ben Rinehart, USA
Kara Rooney, USA
Maria Macedonio-Ritter, USA
Rocco Scary, USA
Jenna Rodriguez, USA
Leonard Seastone, Ronald Beetz, Guyang Chen,
USA
Rosemary Wilson Sloggalt, USA
Norman Shapiro, USA
Meryl Spiegel, USA
Carolyn Sheehan, USA
Tamar Stone, USA
Patrick Vincent, USA
Bianca Tschainter, Austria
Ellen Weiner, USA
Monica Vasinca, Romania
Susan Viguers, USA
Mancia Widenor, USA
Mou Zhu, USA
Mezouar Wafaa, Morocco
Thomas Parker Williams, USA
Szemak Zsuzsa, Romania
Tmima Z, USA
INTERNATIONAL BOOK ART BIENNIAL COMES TO LONG ISLAND
The Islip Art Museum is the leading exhibition space for contemporary art on
Long Island, features artwork by contemporary artists from around the world. Four
exhibitions are presented a year, each organized around a theme that reflects current
issues and concerns in our contemporary art world. Through its annual open call, the
museum invites artists to submit work for an exhibition based on a theme of an
independent curator’s choosing. This fall, Islip Art Museum visitors will have the chance
to see the exhibition New York Bound: International Book Art Biennial, this year’s open
call. The exhibition features well over 100 works of art by 70+ artists from around the
world, including countries such as Brazil, Germany, Hungary, Morocco, Romania, and
the United States. Artists were allowed to ship or drop off up to three pieces of artwork.
Dorothea Fleiss, an independent curator living in Germany, curated the exhibition. Fleiss,
a practicing book art artist herself, has chosen the theme to address her concerns of the
growing influence of technology on our everyday lives. During our lifetime we have seen
the overall decline of the printed text with publications going out of business or
converting to purely digital text. It is now possible to store hundreds of books in a virtual
library in your back pocket on your tablet or smartphone. The information and stories are
now easily accessible to anyone with a WiFi connection, but the objectness of the book
has become obsolete. Handheld devices that project text over luminous LCD screens
have replaced the hardcovers, beautiful illustrations, and overall materialness of the book,
freeing artists to use the objectness of the book as they see fit. Artists are free to
manipulate the book and construct works that are challenging and innovative to the
traditional viewer. In the exhibition are a number of artists’ books on view. Artists’ books
are often published in small editions or are sometimes produced as one-of-a-kind pieces.
The form of book art varies from artist to artist with artists creating scrolls, foldouts,
accordions, loose sheets of paper in boxes, or neatly bound books, all of which are
represented in the current exhibition.
New York Bound: International Book Art Biennial comes from the curator’s
ongoing project, the European International Book Art Biennale, which has held
exhibitions across Europe. This is the first time the exhibition has been on display in the
United States. The Biennale is organized by the D. Fleiss & East West Artists, an awardwinning, non-profit international arts organization that works to create a cultural
exchange between artists from Eastern and Western Europe. The exhibition sees the
artists using the book as the basis for their artwork, fostering their unconventional ideas
on the subject. The exhibition encourages the artists to explore the book as an object,
allowing them to create works that challenge the viewers’ conventional notions of the
book. Books have been cast in resin, reconstructed into sculpture; some artists turn to
language, while others gravitate to illustrations. The accordion style book appears to be
the most popular form of book art, allowing the artists to display their illustrative and
imaginative qualities. Artists have turned to intense social issues as their subject matter
while others turned to their own imaginations for engaging stories of fantasy and
imagery. Some artists contemplate the world around them through books, while others
pay homage to the ancient art of writing and record keeping. Keeping with the idea of
recording, some artists turn to books as a mode of keeping a record of their own artistic
progression as a mode of an artistic journal or diary. One example of this is the artist
Norman Shapiro who has submitted three art journals that finds the artist tracking his
progress over the course of time. If a drawing bleeds through the page, he uses it as the
basis for his next drawing. Some artists like Russian artist Mikhail Pogarsky have instead
submitted works based on letter writing and scrapbooking, another type of record
keeping. One of his submissions, Open Letter, is modeled off a package one might send it
in the mail. The cover of his book is stamped and the artist signs his name in a mailing
label. The book consists of bounded white envelopes that are stamped and covered with
images from his travels. Inside each envelope is a postcard or document that relates to a
specific location. He is one of several artists to submit work in this genre.
There are many conventional uses for books. Novelists and writers use them to
tell riveting stories of fiction, while scholars and academics use them as vehicles to
present their research in a convenient place with the hopes of getting new ideas into the
mainstream. Galleries, museums, and artists alike compile their works of art into
catalogues to create a mobile companion to their current or permanent exhibitions or to
highlight their artistic processes. Books allow individuals to package their ideas in a
variety of shapes and materials. In this way, it is then possible to consider the book as an
art object. But books are much more than the content they hold; they shape ideas,
influence the world we live in, and have altered the course of our history. Poets like
Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio have been labeled the fathers of the Italian language due
to the popularity of their works during their own lifetime and have been read by scholars
and the casual reader for well over eight hundred years. Throughout history, religious
texts have swayed readers’ ideology and have led to countless wars and convents. Those
who have wanted power controlled the written word. Kings and emperors have amassed a
vast collection of historical texts as a means of expressing their power and worldliness,
while those who have felt threatened by it have staged mass book burnings as a means of
curbing revolutionary ideas. With the invention of the printing press and moveable type,
the book entered the mainstream, ushering in a period of modernity. The printed word
now became available to the general public, leading to higher literacy rates around the
world. The printed word has also led to the spread of language, as texts were now printed
in secular language instead of traditional Latin. Additionally, the development of print
making had a profound impact on early graphic art as artists could now mass-produce
their work, making books and prints affordable for the general public. At their core,
books are symbols of knowledge and were essential in the cultural exchange of ideas.
Throughout history, grand libraries have been commissioned to house important
documents. Commissioned by the Medici family and constructed by Michelangelo, the
Laurentian Library is one such library. Although it is marveled at today for its
architectural achievements, when it opened its doors in late 16th century, the repository
housed more than 11,000 manuscripts and 4,500 early printed books, becoming a cultural
hub and learning center in Florence.
Given their vibrant history, it is interesting to see how the artists in this exhibition
have reinterpreted the book. The use of language becomes the focal point of their work
for artists like Maria Macedonio-Ritter, whose work The Boy Had Brown Hair and Wore
a Blue Shirt is deceivingly simple, poured latex letterforms in a line of text that hangs
across one of the galleries. Her piece contemplates the visual usage of text to create an
imaginary image. Anyone reading the sentence can, for a brief moment, visualize a boy
with brown hair wearing a blue shirt. The image visualized is unique to each person and
acts as a template in which the viewer’s imagination adds to the boy’s appearance.
Another artist interested in the relationship between visual art and language is Kara
Rooney, whose Monuments of Language attempts to comprehend society’s increasingly
detached interactions. Her books are dipped in black resin, giving them a brittle quality
that is devoid of all text that signifies the breakdown of memory and the dissolution of
knowledge. Another artist interested in the relationship between text and knowledge is
sculptor John Cino. His work, Genesis I, takes its name from it being the artist’s first
book-inspired work. The new series will include a number of stone-bound books with a
specific marking designating its place in the series. Since this is the first book in the
series each page has only one marking. Cino is interested in the idea of being able to
recognize divine objects from different cultures but not being able to understand their
significances. Here, he hopes to replicate that idea and have the visitors able to recognize
what they see and contemplate the meaning behind it. Although his markings are
incomprehensible they represent an unachievable significance that is to be considered.
His sculpture is loosely bound to resemble a book and is placed against the gallery’s fulllength window, allowing the natural light to shine through his incisions and giving the
illusion of light radiating from the book.
Some artists have taken this opportunity to pay homage to the art of writing and
influential historical texts that have shaped the world we live in today. Hungarian artist
Zsoka Paqyi replicates scrolls from antiquity with her two small works. “The Lord’s
Prayer” is reprinted here coupled with images of Christ Pantokrator taken from mosaics
that adorn the Byzantine Hagia Sophia. The pages are reprinted with images and texts
have been rolled up to resemble ancient papyrus scrolls. These scrolls have been burnt at
the edges and faded to give the illusion of age. Another artist inspired by the past is
Darlene Charneco whose piece Page 8: Re-Natured is on display across from the
Museum’s Docent Desk. The painting is a part of her Book of Hope series, which finds
the artist contemplating the common thread of ritual found in all cultures and religions.
Each “page” in the series is composed of a coded text of prayers that send a message of
peace and harmony among mankind for years to come. She uses a plethora of nails and
styles them in a manner that mimics the text of Medieval European scribes or Tibetan
monks. Page 8 expresses her hope for humanity’s conscious re-identification with nature
around and within us.
Where some artists created works that challenge the viewer’s traditional concepts
of books as instruments for recording, tracking progress, or challenging the relationship
between language, text, and the visual image, other artists saw this exhibition as an
opportunity to submit illustrated books inspired by story telling. One artist, Rosemary
Wilson-Sloggatt, breaks down a classic childhood story in her piece A Pocket
Cartography of Little Red Riding Hood. Here, the story of Little Red Riding Hood’s visit
to her grandmother is broken down to its basic components. Characters and other
elements of the story are broken down into visual representational shapes that appear
throughout the small map that opens up to reveal the story. Here, a small red triangle
signifies Little Red, while a gray and black circle is representative of the Wolf. Although
text is absent from the piece, the story is complete. Other artists have opted to submit
original stories in their own hand-bound books. Sabrina Cacciatore, whose book The End
is filled with intaglio prints and texts, reminds the viewer of a Tim Burton Halloweenthemed movie. Her story follows a girl haunted by the idea of her own mortality. Her
fears are personified through imaginary monsters such as vampires and ghosts until she is
finally able to copy with the idea of death. Similar in theme, Eileen Arnow-Levine’s
submission, the traditionally bound She’s Fallen Down Dead, is a playful book with dark
subject matter. Her illustrative style mimics that of children’s books as she tries to
emulate their look and feel with dark subject matter that focuses on the struggles of life.
This book in particular tells a story of a woman who accidentally falls down a flight of
stairs to her death and the legal processes of going through her personal possessions after
death. Instead of their own stories, other artists turn to traditional folklore for inspiration.
One artist, Patrick Vincent, has included four hand-bound books inspired by a composite
view of animal mythologies. He has taken different cultures’ views on the raven, the
hare, the snake, and the fox and presented them here as tokens of human folly and
trickery. Each book is hand-sewn with paper related to the region the fable originates
from; for example, his book on foxes is made of fox cotton, while his book on the hare is
composed of sabai grass and cotton rag fibers.
The majority of the works included in the exhibition are accordion style art books
that highlight the illustrative qualities of the artists. Their pages fold out to expose the
artists’ personal styles and subject matter. One theme that runs through the work of
several artists is that of the natural world. Dawn Lee’s Water’s Edge unfolds on its shelf
to reveals digital photographs printed on rag paper with an alternative waterscape filled
with vegetation. Her prints are abstract, and the color tone is muted, requiring the viewers
to really study her work to fully comprehend what they are seeing. Dawn’s work is
placed next to that of JoAnne Dumas, whose work entitled Shimmering, is also an
abstraction of digital photography. Although these works are printed onto archival matte
paper, there is a reflective quality to the image that resembles its subject matter of
reflective bodies of water. On the opposite side of the gallery is the accordion book of
Thomas Parker Williams. His work Traveler No. 2 is filled with black and white
illustrations of a unique landscape over the course of several panels. It is intended for the
piece to be observed through the accompanying viewfinder that acts as a window of a
train or moving car. As the visitor progresses through the piece, the action of moving the
viewfinder mimics that of passing through a desert oasis on the open road. Another
accordion book, Rosaire Appel’s Another Incident, is made up of digital prints and
reminds the viewers of a comic book as the vibrant colors are broken up into different
panels. There is a perfect blend of colorful illustration mixed in with black-and-white
imagery throughout the museum galleries.
Instead of a bound book, some artists opted to submit works that consist of loose
pages that are meant to be on display in any order. Anne Covell’s piece Natural Order: A
Game of Pairs consists of handmade playing cards that resemble the childhood game
Concentration. The deck of cards contains animals and other elements that are found in
nature. Instead of matching pairs, the idea of the game is to associate and partner
symbiotic relationships that are found within nature. Players not only learn about the
mutual partnerships found in nature, but also the parasitic ones, allowing them to
understand the complexity of relationships found in nature. Also in the exhibition is
Bernard Hallstein’s Horse Story. Consisting of loose laminated pages in a crafted wood
box, it tells the story of a woman who leaves town with her horse. Since the pages are not
bound together, the events of the story are free to appear in any order, allowing a
different story to be told depending on the page order. Another artist that submitted a
work consisting of loose pages is Romanian artist Andrei Budescu. His work
Photographer’s Block is a universal piece consisting of crumbled up pieces of printer
paper placed in and around a clear trash bag. Budescu, here, is expressing his frustration
of creating something that he can be proud of. Although it is targeted for photographers
who can undoubtedly share in his frustration, the piece can inspire the same emotional
response in authors who have spent hours trying to write a compelling story, or in anyone
who has ever hit a creative brick wall.
It must be noted that New York Bound: International Book Art Biennial was made
possible due to of the curator’s relationship with Museum Director/Curator Beth
Giacummo. Beth is the Director of the New York sector of DFEWA and the two curators
came together with artist and arts management specialist Jessica McAvoy to create the
Fleiss – Giacummo – McAvoy New York Contemporary Art Symposium 2013 (FGM),
an international artists residency based in New York to encourage and improve the
cultural exchange between artists and collaborating communities. Concurrently in the
museum’s ballroom is a special exhibition that features the artwork of FGM artists that
were created during their stay on Long Island. Both, the special FGM exhibition and New
York Bound, offer museum visitors a unique opportunity to see artwork from around the
world and it is encouraged to view this work before the exhibition closes.
In the end it is impossible to discuss every work that is included in this
extraordinary exhibition. By their very nature, the majority of these works must be
thumbed through, and handled in person in order to fully enjoy them. The overall
response from artists and the general public has been hugely supportive. A reception for
the exhibition was held October 6 at the Museum and saw several hundred people come
in to celebrate the book art. Thanks must be given to the entire staff, interns, and
volunteers of the Islip Art Museum and the Islip Arts Council. Without their hard work
and dedication this show would not have been a success. A special thank you must be
given to Beth Giacummo, Museum Director/Curator, for her advisement in the
installation of the artwork and for her keen sense of foresight in planning an exhibition of
this volume. Thanks must also be given to Rosa Ramos, Museum Financial Director, who
spent hours revising and proofreading all promotional material for the exhibition, and for
receiving and processing artwork. A final thank you must go to Jacqueline Krapf,
Museum Intern, for her time and dedication in receiving and processing artwork, and for
preparing the museum galleries for the exhibition. New York Bound: International Book
Art Biennial has been on view at the Islip Art Museum since September 22 and will
continue to be on display until December 29. Be sure to come in and enjoy.
Jay Schuck, Museum Curatorial Assistant
Islip Art Museum
Islip Art Museum
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Town Board
Tom Croci, Supervisor
Steven J. Flotteron, Councilman
Trish Bergin Weichbrodt, Deputy Supervisor
John C. Cochrane, Jr., Councilman
Anthony S. Senft, Jr., Councilman
Olga H. Murray, Town Clerk
Alexis Weik, Receiver of Taxes
Department of Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs
Joseph Montuori, Commissioner
The Islip Art Museum is a division of the Town of Islip
Department of Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs, and is
managed by the Islip Arts Council, a non-profit agency in
Brookwood Hall, 50 Irish Lane, East Islip, NY 11730
Beth Giacummo, Museum Exhibition Director/Curator
Rosa Ramos, Museum Administrative Assistant
Jay Schuck, Museum Curatorial Assistant/Catalog Design
Jacqueline Krapf, Selected Catalog Photography
Lynda A. Moran, Executive Director, Islip Arts Council
Rosa Ramos, Finance Director, Islip Arts Council
Victoria Berger, Program Director, Islip Arts Council
Jessica Elias, Administrative Assistant, Islip Arts Council
Thank you to our donors, Islip Arts Council Members and donors,
and sponsors. The staff of the Islip Art Museum thanks the artists
for their participation.
Visit us at www.islipartsmuseum.org and www.isliparts.org
Or like us on Facebook.
Public funding provided, in part,
by Suffolk County
©2013 Islip Art Museum All rights reserved. All materials in this catalog are copyrighted. No part of this publication m ay be reproduced or used in any form without written permission of the publishers. For information contact Islip Art Museum, 50 Irish Lane, East Islip, NY 11730