The work involves creating installations inside hollowed out books and displaying them on shelves attached to a wall or on a stand.
Media: old books, wood, brass hardware, lamps, found objects
contact details: ber@berlazarus.ca
www.berlazarus.ca
ARTIST STATEMENT
Inspired in part by Gaston Bachelard's idea of an 'intimate immensity' in his book "The Poetics of Space", Ex Libris is series of small scale installations in very confined spaces.
It emerges out of the ongoing contemporary technological shift from text based to visually based cultural transmission. In this work text and visual vocabulary are brought together. What was a readable book becomes a closed container. Original text becomes context for a series of visual narratives.
Although the spaces are small and intimate, the effect when looking through the viewfinder is one of immensity. I am interested in form and scale and in the inter-relationships of objects in any given space. I am fascinated by how we seem to always find ways of creating intimate spaces for ourselves which are invariably filled with objects, as if the objects themselves provide the intimacy we seek.
Through its presentation Ex Libris brings viewers into intimate physical proximity with the work. This shifts the spectator away from the traditional viewing stance i.e. standing back and looking straight ahead. Viewers must approach, bend at the waist and peer through the view-finder to access the interior work.
The books, as well as the objects and images contained within the books, make reference to nature, humanity, science, industry, politics, culture and art. They suggest such issues of concern as: image versus text, nature versus civilization, interior versus exterior, confinement versus freedom, solitude versus community, surveillance & voyeurism versus privacy.
Ber Lazarus, 2010