In conjunction with the 2024 meeting of CBAA The Association for Book Art Education, the Rollins Museum of Art is presenting an exhibition examining the concept of critical reading. This exhibition will feature text-based contemporary works from the Rollins Book Arts Collection, the Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art and juried submissions from CBAA members. Artists’ books have emerged over the last 50 years as a unique form of interdisciplinary contemporary art with a special relationship to what is commonly understood as “the book.” As such, these art objects utilize our shared experiences with reading--both for pleasure and knowledge—and our understanding of books as vessels for sharing expertise in an infinite array of topics. As practitioners of a complex interdisciplinary practice, book artists are uniquely positioned to interrogate cultural assumptions about books, and by extension—our experiences with reading and knowledge—through a critical lens.
While some book artists seek to dismantle the book as a symbol of authority or singularity, echoing the practice of critical reading from other disciplines, others critique what is going on in contemporary life through a wide range of research topics & personal experiences. Others challenge our preconceptions about the act of reading by pushing experimental methods of communication and comprehension by asking readers to take an active role in making sense of a text, or by producing texts that are designed to provoke and confound. Book art is a genre of investigation, interrogation and renewal that both embraces its link to this important object that changed the trajectory of human evolution—the book—while taking a critical view of that same object through its common use and significance. The real power in these objects is their unique ability to feel both familiar and foreign, to invite the reader into a space where they can engage with an internal reassessment of their previous experiences with books, and their understanding of what it means to read a book.
This exhibition will include works by contemporary artists working in various media such as Rirkrit Tiravanija and Fred Tomaselli who examine how the representation of language is layered with multiple interpretive possibilities, as well as pieces by William Kentridge and Richard Baker that consider the book as object while conveying the multivalent stories contained within them. Artist’s books from the Rollins Book Arts Collection as well as by members of CBAA The Association for Book Art Education will activate dialogues across media with works from the museum’s collection, providing opportunities to engage in critical reading from diverse perspectives. This synergy between this array of objects-- paintings, drawings, videos, sculptures and artists’ books—will underscore the power of language in its multiple forms to challenge expectations about representation and content.
Critical Reading is co-curated by Gisela Carbonell, Ph.D., Curator at the Rollins Museum of Art and Prof. Rachel Simmons, Art and Art History Department at Rollins College.