December 23, 2011
The Great Wall by Guy Laramee. A beautiful landscape constructed from books, with a fascinating story. From the artist’s site:
“Having recently overthrown the American Empire in the 23rd century, the Chinese Empire set out to chronicle the history of the Great Panics during the 21st and 22nd centuries.
This Herculean undertaking resulted in a historiographical masterwork entitled, The Great Wall. Comprising 100 volumes, this encyclopaedia derives its name from The Great Wall of America, a monumental project to build an impregnable wall around the United States of America so as to protect this land from barbarian invasions. 150 years in the making, this wall ultimately isolated Americans from the rest of the world while sapping the country’s remaining cultural and natural resources. It also undermined the American people’s confidence in systematized hedonism, thus hastening the fall of the American Empire. As we now know this paved the way for China to invade American territory.
The Chinese Empire later ordered a group of scribes to write The Great Wall series. In the course of their duties they familiarized themselves with the libraries of the former USA. Through a strange twist of fate they thereby discovered the ancient sources of their own civilization which the new Middle Kingdom had long ago removed from its libraries. In the end this contact, primarily with Taoism and Chan (Zen) Buddhism, sowed the seeds of the Chinese Empire’s”

The Great Wall by Guy Laramee. A beautiful landscape constructed from books, with a fascinating story. From the artist’s site:

“Having recently overthrown the American Empire in the 23rd century, the Chinese Empire set out to chronicle the history of the Great Panics during the 21st and 22nd centuries.

This Herculean undertaking resulted in a historiographical masterwork entitled, The Great Wall. Comprising 100 volumes, this encyclopaedia derives its name from The Great Wall of America, a monumental project to build an impregnable wall around the United States of America so as to protect this land from barbarian invasions. 150 years in the making, this wall ultimately isolated Americans from the rest of the world while sapping the country’s remaining cultural and natural resources. It also undermined the American people’s confidence in systematized hedonism, thus hastening the fall of the American Empire. As we now know this paved the way for China to invade American territory.

The Chinese Empire later ordered a group of scribes to write The Great Wall series. In the course of their duties they familiarized themselves with the libraries of the former USA. Through a strange twist of fate they thereby discovered the ancient sources of their own civilization which the new Middle Kingdom had long ago removed from its libraries. In the end this contact, primarily with Taoism and Chan (Zen) Buddhism, sowed the seeds of the Chinese Empire’s”

January 12, 2010

Su Blackwell made these strange mixed media + photoshopped Wizard of Oz diorama-like art pieces for Harrods Magazine last year.  Also one for the Nutcracker, which sadly is a bit blurry.

November 2, 2009
The best shot I could find of this piece from Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, chronotapes & dioramas, 2009 (via 16 Miles of String)

The best shot I could find of this piece from Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, chronotapes & dioramas, 2009 (via 16 Miles of String)

September 27, 2009
confabulationnation:

Her [French artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster] exhibit at the society, “chronotopes & dioramas,” presents a meticulously fashioned fantasy of a library in which shelves have become obsolete, and books, like examples of living creatures, are displayed in illusionistic dioramas that evoke those of the American Museum of Natural History.
In this kind of library the Dewey decimal system has been replaced by a subjective method of categorization, where Franz Kafka, J. G. Ballard, Adolfo Bioy Casares and Gertrude Stein are grouped together in the depths of the North Atlantic, and Jorge Luis Borges and Roberto Bolaño share company in the desert.
“It’s a way of trying to organize a very visual library,” she explained, “to treat books almost like living beings.”
“chronotopes & dioramas” is on view Sept. 23-April 18, 2010 at Dia at the Hispanic Society. For more information visit www.diaart.org

Inanimate objects in diorama

confabulationnation:

Her [French artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster] exhibit at the society, “chronotopes & dioramas,” presents a meticulously fashioned fantasy of a library in which shelves have become obsolete, and books, like examples of living creatures, are displayed in illusionistic dioramas that evoke those of the American Museum of Natural History.

In this kind of library the Dewey decimal system has been replaced by a subjective method of categorization, where Franz Kafka, J. G. Ballard, Adolfo Bioy Casares and Gertrude Stein are grouped together in the depths of the North Atlantic, and Jorge Luis Borges and Roberto Bolaño share company in the desert.

“It’s a way of trying to organize a very visual library,” she explained, “to treat books almost like living beings.”

“chronotopes & dioramas” is on view Sept. 23-April 18, 2010 at Dia at the Hispanic Society. For more information visit www.diaart.org

Inanimate objects in diorama