Illuminations

– For the hitchhikers of the Gutenberg Galaxy

Opening: 20th of February, 6 pm Oriented towards cultural history, this thematic exhibit applies diverse interpretations to the genre of the artist’s book, while making its own contribution to the current discourse on the future of the book. The book appears simultaneously as the symbol of the continuously passing present, and as a precious, hidden nook of what has formerly appeared eternal, the Gutenberg Galaxy. At the intersection points of the exhibition, the premonition or experience of loss appears as a visual metaphor, on which the artists reflect with different techniques, such “memories of the book ” as a book statue, a visual poem, a bookshelf with logs,— or else overwrite this vision, as with a gothic-pixellated, remodelled typeface. Books of fate with interlacing pages and fragmentary texts; transformed objects that still resemble books; scrapped bulletins as wells of time, covered with cloud papers in a mysteriously beautiful land of books; a void dug into a wartime book of poetry; lines of a poem running around in circles—so many contemporary reflections projected onto “blind books,” reinforcing the intellectual horizon of the book.
Yet, whether it is a case of typographical distancing or one of lyrical approach, the exhibition as a whole bears testimony to the idea that a book is the most beautiful form of solitude.
The exhibition is accompanied by a variety of side events.