The Art Center’s spring exhibitions, Readings and Artist Made Books, will be on view March 21 – May 23, 2009. On View in Gallery Julius: Roadside by Susan Brooks Talbot

Opening Reception: Sunday, May 22, 3 - 5pm

Readings is a small group exhibition featuring sculpture, paintings and photographs of books by Adam Bateman, Stanford Kay and Buzz Spector.  These three artists explore the book, each in their own way: as subject, object and material.  They focus on content and their relationship to it as an object. 

From the Artists

Adam Bateman: "Language is made up of arbitary symbols, that when arranged (or structured) in a certain way, have meaning. The primary structure of my sculptures is the text of the books, the secondary structure os the form made of the books. In that way, the books actually work as signifiers (like words) and so the structured arrangement I make with them is analogous to writing." "Unlike the Conceptual artists, I am not concerned with idea as art, rather I'm interested in art as language. Like they used language as image, I use language as object. I do this because I believe that objects, especially art objects, are signifiers like words and all togther are a sign system that should be read, like one would read a text, to be understood. Reading the art-text and applying rhetorical or linguistic theories can inform the historical rading of the contemporary art work in surprising ways."

Stanford Kay: "We experience the pages of a book as flat, black ink on white paper, but a book has space in the way a flat painting has space, through ideas and conventions. Because books are a unqiue class of object that engages us mentally and emotionally, independent of their objectness, the books in my paintings often appear as solid forms but also as windows into spaces and realms of memory and imagination. Both paintings and books are depositories of ideas: what we think about, what we know, what we have learned, what we remember and value. My work reflects an interest in painting that is both formally abstract and at the same time referential. Ultimately these works are meditations of memory, identity, and the sanctuary of books. Much as a book requires the reader to assemble images and ideas out of its sign and symbols so the viewer of the a painting must translate the strokes and drips of a painting into reason and emotion."

Buzz Spector: "I think you'd have to characterize my art as the application of a sensibility rather than a set of signatory motifs. My work is abstract: it derives from things in nature or things in culture, but it's meant to be understood in terms of the excavation or displacement of its objects from their situations. I came of age, artistically, in the 'Process Years' of the early 1970s and I still want the effects I employ in making my work to be identified with modes of experience or knowledge." Spector's main creative materials have been books, archives, and other repositories of knowledge and human experience. Sometimes called a theoretician's artist, native Chicagoan Buzz Spector is well-known for exploring themes surrounding the idea of the book and authorship. In his series of Polaroid images of books from his personal library, Spector explores the book's complex identity as both a physical and conceptual object. He manipulates books to reveal their metaphorical significance as symbols or order and knowledge in contemporary society. Spector makes frequent use of the book, both as a subject and an object, and is concerned with relationships between public history, individual memory and perception.

Artist Made Books will feature the work of eight regional book artists: Sarah Bryant, the Victor Hammer Fellows at Wells College; Pamela Drix of Ithaca, NY; Kumi Korf of Ithaca, NY; Scott McCarney of Rochester, NY; IVARYKEITH (Keith Smith of Rochester, NY & Kim, MyoungSoo (Ivary) of Seoul, Korea); Maddy Rosenberg of Ithaca, NY; Buzz Spector of Ithaca, NY and Christa Wolf of Ithaca, NY.  Their work explores traditional printmaking processes, altered books and digital techniques.

Roadside will feature photographs by Auburn artist Susan Brooks Talbot. Talbot describes these sepia-tomed giclee prints as "defining grace along the paths of the Finger Lakes." The exhibit will feature six of her most recent images captured in 2008.

Please join us on for the Opening Reception on Sunday, March 22nd from 3 – 5pm.