Avatar
Artist information:
Brian Dettmer
Atlanta, GA
Text voting ID: Tooltip
Up: vote33241
Down: vote33240
Brian Dettmer is showing at:
The Old Federal Building The Old Federal Building
155 N Division Ave
Grand Rapids, MI 49503
View profile
Brian Dettmer
Artist bio: Brian Dettmer is originally from Chicago.. He currently lives and works in Atlanta, GA.

Dettmer has had solo shows in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Barcelona and has had projects exhibited in Mexico City, Berlin and London among others. He is currently represented by Kinz + Tillou Fine Art in New York, Packer Schopf in Chicago, MiTO Gallery in Barcelona, Toomey Tourell in San Francisco and Slatworks in Atlanta. His work has been in several museums, universities and art centers throughout the U.S. and Europe and his work can be found in several private and public collections throughout the U.S, Latin America, Europe and Asia.

Dettmer’s work has gain International acclaim through the Internet, bloggers, and traditional media. His bibliography includes Modern Painters magazine, The Village Voice, The New York Times, Harper’s, Time Out, Chicago Tribune, Toronto Star, The San Francisco Bay Guardian and National Public Radio, among several others.
Artist statement: As information evolves into smaller, faster forms its physicality disappears and stability is lost in the constantly shifting liquid landscape of digital data. Old books, records, maps, tapes and other media are often reduced to status symbols or decorative devices; rather than serving as true conveyors of content. By altering preexisting materials and shifting their functions, new and unexpected roles emerge. Through meticulous excavation or concise alteration, I edit or dissect communicative objects such as books, maps, and tapes to explore their inherent meanings and material conditions. I begin by sealing an existing book or series of books to create an enclosed vessel. I work with knives, tweezers, and other surgical tools to carve through one page at a time. As each new layer reveals itself I cut around ideas and images of interest. Records of the past solidify, shift or slip away as ideas fracture and reform.
About the work:
Title: World Books

Art form: 3-D

Medium: Altered Set of Vintage Encyclopedias

Year created: 2009

Description of work: This piece is derived from a single set of World Book encyclopedias. The books have been manipulated by pulling and sealing the bindings back and connecting each single book together to create one large woody mass to suggest a series of single units forming a multicellular life form. The sculpture also becomes a landscape as it is carved from the surface into the pages, one at a time, forming a canyon of information eroding from within. Each book is sealed before I begin and each time I carve through a layer I am surprised by what I see. It is like reading with a knife. Nothing within the books is moved or added, just carved and exposed as I make decisions to react to the inner content as I cut each stratum. The books become a body, the body becomes a landscape, and the landscape erodes as information is sanded and carved away, lost in history as new technology washes away our stability and our memory.

Work statement: My work is about information and the threat that physical media is under in today’s digital age. Books are in an unresolved state as the stability of the printed page is washed away by the speed of new technology. A book’s form dictates a linear path, either chronologically or alphabetically, from beginning to end but history does not have a singular story and there is no end. History emerges and grows in branches, breaking from the main timeline. Each time we open a book a new path is taken to understand the past. We must jump back and forth, imposing our own intervention on a linear system. The structure and speed of the internet has washed away the monopoly of reference books, making it faster to get to what we want to know and easier to change as new information emerges but this capability that makes it so easy is also what allows it to be so unstable. Ones and Zeros float in the ether, untied and often lost. History becomes erased as formats change and our memory fades.
Technical details:
Work width: 10 inches
Work height: 19 inches
Work depth: 32 inches
Required venue ceiling: n/a
Required venue door height: n/a
Required venue door width: n/a
Required wall linear footage: n/a
Required venue square footage: n/a
Additional considerations:
Audio/video needed: No
Electrical needed: No
Lighting needed: Yes
Internet access needed: No
Ground floor access needed: No
Indoor space needed: Yes
Outdoor space needed: No
© 2009-2010 ArtPrize Grand Rapids, Inc.