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ars libri 1
The Cartin Collection @ Ars Libri, Boston
March 7 – April 27, 2008
Wim Delvoye as well as Gary Gissler, Gregory Green, Joseph Grigley, Stefana McClure and Charles Sandison
Wim Delvoye’s Flatbed Trailer Scale Model & Caterpillar 5C Scale Model is installed in the expansive Harrison Avenue windows. The work is a scale model of an earth excavator on a tractor-trailer, in laser-cut stainless steel. This work is, in fact, the maquette for a 1:1 version cut from corten steel that has been exhibited in Europe and the Middle East. Delvoye’s broad-based studio practice can be described as one of paradox, deriving energy from a current found in the work of many other Belgian artists, often referred to as “surrealist”. Delvoye’s series of heavy construction equipment features an unlikely combination of medieval religious architecture with contemporary industry, where the weight of heavy machinery and stone cathedrals is rendered in laser cut stainless steel, resembling gothic lace. Art-historical inferences are abundant, with a suggested equivalency between “high” medieval Christianity and its contemporary doppelgänger -- the corporate, industrial and commercial might expressed by the excavator.
Within the interior of the Ars Libri space is a second exhibition of work by Gary Gissler, Gregory Green, Joseph Grigley, Stefana McClure and Charles Sandison. Each of these artists address ideas of language, words, speech or the book. Gary Gissler’s work is an exquisite (if not excruciating) demonstration of the physicality of the written word, while Stefana McClure and Joseph Grigley each investigate the interrelatedness of the written word’s visual, auditory, spatial and temporal dimensions. Gregory Green’s Bible Bomb reminds us of the unforeseen consequences wrought by hyper-earnest bibliophiles throughout history, while Charles Sandison’s work evokes encyclopedic impossibility.