Monday, December 3, 2007

Brian Demetter



Brian Demetter creates his pieces by selectively cutting through the pages of old books to reveal images and text. To me, his work brings up questions of intentionality. It's obviously highly planned out, to an extent that makes me wonder how he managed to get it all to work together as well as it does, since he doesn't rearrange any of the pages. Yet the final effect is generated by the book itself, based on how the images all come together.

Plus, I really like old encyclopedia imagery and book arts. Lots more images here.

Also, he made this awesome ram's skull out of old melted cassettes:



Something about the quality of his work reminds me of Kara Walker, although her content is completely different. Still, she draws from the style of old illustrations, which is what Demetter is working with.

1 comment:

Gregory Thielker said...

Books and recontextualization seem like ripe material for the post-modern artist. Still, this artist does a nice job of keeping it sort of whimsical by focusing on the illustrations, rather then some obscure juxtapositions of text. But that's just my opinion!