Sorted Books

Description

Conceptual artists Nina Katchadourian selects & stacks groupings of two, three, four or five books so the titles on their spines can be read as sentences forming whimsical, witty and poignant poems & narratives.

New York-based artist Nina Katchadourian works with a wide range of media from sculpture and installation to photography, often exploring issues of mapping, translation and language. Her work has been exhibited at prestigious institutions across the globe, including PS1/MoMA, the Serpentine Gallery, New Langton Arts, Artists Space, SculptureCenter and the Palais de Tokyo. She is the recipient of numerous grants and awards and her work has been featured in publications internationally.

As a longtime fan of artist Nina Katchadourian's long-running Sorted Books project I'm thrilled for the release of Sorted Books-a collection spanning nearly two decades of her witty and wise minimalist mediations on life by way of ingeniously arranged book spines.... In an era drowned in periodic death tolls for the future of the physical book, her project stands as a celebration of the spirit embedded in the magnificent materiality of the printed page. - Brain Pickings In Sorted Books, a project started nearly 20 years ago, Nina Katchadourian reveals the new narratives books can tell when stacked and organized by the titles printed on their spines. What results are short prose-poems. Some are witty, such as, Speaking of Pianists/Am I Too Loud?/Beethoven Lives Upstairs; others thought-provoking, such as Paradise/Extra Innings/After Death; but all have a way of proving that the seemingly ordinary things around us have fascinating new possibilities. - Oprah.com Katchadourian's project - stacking books so that their titles read as droll, poem-like phrases, then photographing the results - takes on a weight beyond its initial novelty. It's a love letter to books, book collecting and the act of reading. - San Francisco Chronicle Katchadourian's stacks possess an understated sophistication; they are true to the intimate nature of books and yet reveal their dramatic features and unexpected potential. - Publishers Weekly