Books On Books

The 20th century poet Ezra Pound espoused the view that the best way to understand and critique literature was by juxtaposition of works from different periods. Here is an attempt at that approach applied to the art of Jukhee Kwon and John Latham, but the critic might have better selected Kwon’s Libro Libero (2013) to make the point about “releasing … energy and celebrating freedom”. Kwon’s own thoughts about Libro Libero lead in a different direction though.

The work of Libro Libero was done with a Christian nun’s book. I am not so religious a person, but I understand that religion is about life. How we come and how we live and how we die. And every belief has a strong link with something invisible and oneself visible … (we live in the body) … you can say the connection between the soul and body. 

So I made the bookwork to be producer and receiver. Pages are coming out (producer) and the scrolled papers are below them (receiver). 
The shredded paper is falling and settling on the scrolled paper boat (it looks like a boat or if you will a bowl). The falling paper is fragile but in the boat or bowl it becomes solid and safe. 

Email to author, 26 September 2018, edited for brevity.

At the October Gallery in London in January 2019, I had the chance to see a similar bookwork. The difference drives home the use of the book as material — like clay or stone for sculpture, oils or watercolour for painting. But it is freighted, manifold material.

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It brings paper, cloth or leather, and ink; it brings content. As in Libro Libero, Kwon turns another book into an active composite — the covers opened to spill out pages, cut and braided into ribbons, the last of which have been dipped into ink. Or, per the title, is it the covers opening, the pages unravelling and braiding, the ink of the words draining into a pool of darkness into which the ribbons are dipping? Rather than the lighter spiritual association suggested by the former’s title, shape and action, Dipping into Darkness implies a blacker interpretation. Or perhaps that is too Western a perspective. Is the breviary at the pinnacle of the work the result of the brush-like shape’s dipping into the ink of contemplation?

If the chance to view and contemplate Kwon’s art arises, take it.

Further Reading

Culture 24

October Gallery