Superscript

form & concept | April 2018

“The working title for Superscript was ‘Exploded Book,’” says Jordan Eddy, director of form & concept and curator of the gallery’s spring book art exhibition. “I spent the winter hunting for book artworks that quite literally project into the world around them.” The group show unites insurgent members of New Mexico’s formidable community of book artists, along with several artists from across the nation. It is almost entirely composed of large-scale installation works that either incorporate books or are conceptually linked to them. 

“We finally settled on Superscript, a typographical term that we’re repurposing as an antonym for ‘subtext,’” says Eddy. “These works make surprising statements about what book art can be.” Penney Bidwell and Matt Doubek present The Poet, a toy capsule vending machine that dispenses snippets of poetry by Adrian Oteiza and Ran Huntsberry. There’s a vinyl window display by Melody Sumner Carnahan and Michael Sumner of the imprint Burning Books, and a series of mixed media artworks that Erin Mickelson created in collaboration with poetry and image-generating Twitter bots.

There’s no shortage of more traditional books in the exhibition — collections of pages with bindings and covers — but even those are often subject to radical intervention. Edie Tsong covers found books with black ink, using a technique known as erasure to explore racial identity. Alicia Bailey and Hannah Bennett deconstruct books into undulating or high-flying sculptures. Sabrina and Damon Griffith, who are seasoned puppeteers, set designers, and costume designers, sculpt books into intricate armor. 

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