The Art of Books and Writing
Claire Jeanine Satin, Michael Baigneaux, Mary Bennett and Matthew Rose
October 9 to November 20, 2004
Art Vitam Gallery
3452 North Miami Avenue – Miami, Florida 33127 (Wynwood Art District)
Telephone: 305-571-8342 Fax: 305-571-8352
Contact: info@artvitam.com Website: www.artvitam.com
Second Saturday Walk: Nov 13, 2004 from 7 pm to 10 pm.
Words and books have a long history with modern art, and at Art Vitam, four international artists – Claire Jeanine Satin, Michael Baigneaux, Mary Bennett and Matthew Rose – open the book, and the words they contain to a new visual-cerebral chapter. Treating the printed and hand -written word and the book as a pure plastic invention, these artists have produced their own versions of reading.
Claire Jeanine Satin’s book works combine influences from John Cage, Jasper Johns and her father, a professor of stenography and typewriting. A strong influence in language and signs (semiotics) and the history of flux boxes has enabled her to reinvent the book in a range of materials from iron to clear plastic, to boxes and packages resembling film reel canisters. Satin has also worked extensively with the letter “M,” derived at by chance, and encoded and decoded in many of her works. Among other works, Satain will present her new “transparency books” where clear pages allow light to capture changing appearances of words and images, and to alter the written texts, creating an ever-shifting reading.
Michael Baigneaux has created “ambigrammes,” (ambi means duality; gramme signifies alphabet/grammar). Inspired by words and writing, Baigneaux’s focus at Art Vitam is handwriting and its evolution and convolution over years. Baigneaux revels in language games: His ambigrammes show that only 13 letters of the Roman alphabet are necessary to produce sentences, and even stories.
Mary Bennett spent 20 years “writing memos, explaining how to produce a produce, sell a service or provide customer support,” she says. Bennett has moved out of the office and into a more accomodating space for her expansive “library.” Her works re-imagine and re-contextualize books, and the histories they contain in an irreverent fashion, exploding books into fetichized architectural and sculptural objects. The works make sensual a common object and at the same time permit her to rewrite literally the historical content of her material.
Matthew Rose produces his own “books” and personal stories out of found materials, such as the hand-painted and collage volumes BOYS LIFE, GOD, and the unbound visual novel, The Sea in October. Organizing collage elements and words cut from old grammar books in a way that takes phrases apart and stands them up for out of context, his stories are rhyming fragments that mimic contemporary consciousness. The results are often surreal nostalgia. The artist cites the late artist Ray Johnson, whom he calls both a friend and teacher, as one of his main influences. Some of Rose’s text works in pencil and needlepoint (produced by the artist’s mother), as well as found sculpture will also be on view.
For more information: Sophie-Anne Blachet Tel: 305-571-8342 E-mail: info@artvitam.com