No. of pages: 667

Description:

Why a Monograph?

A MONOGRAPH as an object, a physical image, an image made of material. A catalogue as an “object of images and words.” A MONOGRAPH is a thick book, a big fat anachronism.
The idea is to insert, with a book/catalogue, matter (material) and time, a time of slow handling, slow browsing, into the quick, very quick, very dense, unclear, very unclear, fluid, instant, omnidirectional, raucous, digital… internet media landscape, that is, to introduce a bit of slow pace and a little bit of space and a little bit of thickness into the speed measured in microseconds and into the micro-thinness of information.
The form of a book/catalogue is a form of stopping time. While a book/catalogue is a well-known and still well-established form, it is nonetheless becoming maladapted to the present, awkward, clumsy – an incompatible form. A materialized image is incompatible material with microelectronics.
A book/catalogue is a – smallish – object. A monographic catalogue is larger, connecting, uniting, and intertwining images and words. In the era of thin flat screens, a book/catalogue is also a matter of the volume of images and words. And the rustling of the pages of a book is a sound, and the printed colors are a scent. Creating a physical space for words and images. Creating a 3D space for the word and the picture. A catalogue as an object, a physical image, an image made of material. A catalogue as “the object of the image and the word.”
As artists we concern ourselves – not only in terms of content, not only in terms of drawing, but also by handling, with our hands and fingers, by modeling, manipulating = designing – with the form and the format and the thickness and the size of the letter, invitation leaflet, poster, catalogue, book… because form = content; it is not only about the message.
A book also always has a certain thickness. A matter of space and the matter of a book’s thickness. The thickness of a space as a concept: the space below and above, in front – behind, up and down and from the side.
Why is it interesting and why does it need to be stressed that a book/catalogue has a certain thickness and three dimensions? There is an interior of a book, something inside hidden by the book/catalogue’s sur face, by its cover; what we see also hides something at the same time.
There is also the back side of a book/catalogue, its reverse. And the bottom of a book/catalogue and a spine that opens the covers – like a door into the book. And the spine holds together the leaves, the pages of the book bearing images like cupped hands.
And also: every person is today an object, and every object can also be a person.