book cell

Centro de Arte Moderna - Foundation Calouste Gulbenkian
Lisbon, Portugal
Until December 31, 2006

Book Cell

The Book Cell Project, which will be installed in the CAMJAP’s Hall and remain there during six months, repeats the recurring procedure, in the work of this artist, of piling up thousands of books, creating an architectonic structure where we are invited to step inside.

The memory and knowledge accumulated in the books gathered, closed and inaccessible, diverse and precious will be potentially recovered in the end, when all of the books can return to their function of being read, but meanwhile they will have been worked on as sculpting matter and as the spirit of the place where the artist intends to hold us: an hexagonal enclosure with a passage defined by mirrors that assure the vertigo of a fall, the ad infinitum fragmentation, the panic of spatial disorientation characteristic of a virtual infinity.

Book Cell will gather editions from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation from the past 50 years, reinforcing the site specific nature of the work with the incorporation of one of the most precious streaks in the history of the cultural intervention of this institution.

The metaphor indicating that all those books are part of and enrich the universal editorial production, gains visibility in the blend orchestrated in the construction of Book Cell, between the Foundation’s publications and several other books from around the world.

Book Cell Book Cell Book Cell

Book Cell Book Cell One of the very first drawings