Artist Book as Gallery Space

As a senior working on his thesis project in the Stamps School of Art & Design, I’ve been (obsessively) thinking about different ways to display artwork. Outside of the traditional gallery setting, the general public has more access to art than ever before – most artists have portfolio websites, or galleries documenting exhibitions in their spaces, in addition to physical forms of “takeaway” objects meant to summarize the work through postcards and artist books.

This past weekend marked the opening of Stamps MFA exhibitions – the third year students’ shows taking place in the Stamps gallery spaces (Slusser here on north campus, and Work down on central), as well as a warehouse in Hamtramck and a smaller gallery further inside Detroit; while the first year graduate students showed their initial ideation processes and studies in the faculty studios on Green Rd. here in Ann Arbor. On Thursday, the school provided a bus for us undergrads to travel out to Detroit to see the two separate venues, spending about 45 minutes at each location before concluding the adventure where it began outside of the Michigan Theatre.

The first stop was the giant Hamtramck warehouse space, where the work of artists Joshua Nierodzinski, Natasa Prljevic, and Cosmo Whyte will be up for the coming weeks. The art itself was well done, consisting of paintings, an installation of images, sound, and video, as well as a multimedia collection of prints and sculpture. However, I couldn’t help but feel more overwhelmed by the building itself, only three rooms of which were occupied out of what must have been thousands of square feet and at least ten floors of space. I don’t think it made the work look bad by any means, but perhaps it would have had a bit more of that “wow” factor had the warehouse not dwarfed the focus of the show itself. For me, the saving grace of the exhibition was an artist booklet that was put together by a local publisher in collaboration with the artists, which included more detailed explanations, process photos, and high quality documentation of the work. In contrast to the warehouse-turned-gallery space, it seemed obvious that the format and size of the book was created to fit the art inside it, not the other way around. And for a small fee ($20), anyone could essentially take the show with them and revisit its contents whenever they wanted.

I was immediately struck by the possibility of a book acting as an almost custom, portable gallery space. Of course, art is always better when experienced in person, but especially for someone who was able to make it to the actual exhibition, a book serves as a trigger for the memory of the tangible objects and images it represents. Working in tandem, it seems to be the perfect combination. So much so that I’ve since decided that in addition to the thesis paper I’m required to write about my “project”, I’ll be putting together a sort of thesis zine to act similarly as a takeaway of the work, including process images and writing that the viewer wouldn’t get otherwise.

Sometimes I have nightmares that all the gallery spaces will be filled up, torn down, or taken over by the wrong kind of crowd and that my work will have no place to go. It’s comforting to be reminded that art can live in between the public and private realms of culture, and that if nobody wants to show it, I can at least clear out my room for a photoshoot and pass out booklets to my friends and family. That is, until I’m able to open up a gallery myself 😉

http://www.nierodzinski.com/

http://www.natasaprljevic.com/

http://www.cosmowhyte.com/