Artist Embraces Old-Fashioned Books for his Collage Works

The physical tome will not be made obsolete in artist Brian Dettmer's hands.

October 8, 2016, 11:45am

First to Pass Through, close-up detail, 2015. Hardcover books, acrylic varnish, 53 x 53 x 4 in. All images courtesy the artist and P•P•O•W Gallery

Encyclopedia Britannicas and mid-century reference books replete with historical knowledge are a well from which to revive long-forgotten visuals. Monochrome photos of historical leaders and small-scale snapshots of cartography form dense abstractions in Brian Dettmer’s tableaus in Dodo Data Dada—a series that mines the depths of the written world with an artist’s eye and an archeologist’ precision. The New York-based artist draws directly from the pages of now-antiquated tombs when determining the appropriate images for his multidimensional quasi-collages. A vehement proponent of the physical book, Dettmer shares in an artist essay his thinking behind the physical book’s demise: society is “currently witnessing a historic shift in the way we record and receive our ideas and information.”

First to Pass Through, 2015

Dettmer writes, “The physical book no longer has the singular monopoly and authority it once had. They now lie like furniture, hidden in basement boxes, or displayed on a shelf to signify intellect while they collect dust.”

The artist plays with the idea of historical context and how outdated artifacts can sing with new meaning in the present. In one piece he uses more than two dozen encyclopedia volumes! Dettmer’s love for encyclopedias and their incorporation into his work, “disperses into new patterns that connect cross-cultural references of past symbols.”

“References become ruins, defeated fragments fractured from the passing of time or the forced violence of a new regime. The past authorities have been toppled and the format has changed.”