About

I have been interested in 'book-making' since I can remember. What fascinates me in books at present, being an artist, is their hovering between manifestation and secrecy. To me, there is something fundamentally paradoxical about (art)(ist) books. They allow you to get inside, to enter, and taste their innermost fruits, but they will never reveal their true essence, their full meaning. For that reason, they will be visited again and again, like the drawer or box we search over and over so as to find what seems definitely lost. Melancholy, eventually, is colouring our view. We notice what is lost, but in the act of noticing the loss is preserved Š as art in the eye of the beholder. Good books do not appeal only to 'visuality' but to other senses as well. Tactility, I think, too, is prerequisite for something being a real book. The last five years I have been exploring the book as an ingredient of contemporary art. It was, and still is, my aim to identify the book as a work on its own. The appearance of my books testifies to their artistic independence.

While researching bookarts I have always been very interested in the presentation of the artist book and the problems of presenting the book as a piece of art. On the one hand there is always the fragile and tactile book, which can be damaged quite easily, on the other hand the very much appreciated personal intimite contact with the work. During my MA in bookarts I mostly focussed on providing a platform for thinking about the artist book as a medium and its intrinsic behaviour. The work that resulted from this research ( titled: What you think you are seeing) establishes a hierarchy of its own, and therefor asks for a new interpretation researching the interplay between visual and verbal modes of expression.It represents a powerful and contradictory message through a conventional format, and thus offers a possibility to visit and revisit the content of the book. Bringing back the democracy to the (artist) book and its public through preserving the full collection (as is a designed book) and make them/it accesible to the greatest number of people, physically as well as intellectualy. I am interested in enlarging the perception of the book as an object and allowing a acces to its content by creating a complex space with a dynamic tension. Commitment to the book as a published form is one thing, putting one's visual world into the intmacy of the book, is quite another. Making this expression look outwards through publishing to the viewer, the very dual nature of putting in and giving out.

If the book is a tool to provide a critical look at the world, the book should be a critical medium itself, not just by content but also through form. Therefor my aim would not only be to create a new paradigm for interaction between (artist) book and audience. But also change the subject of discussion. The (art)(ist) book is such an interesting platform, that has provoked thought for decades and will continue to do so. Because itÕs undefinable nature it will stay subject of discussion for years to come.

Through filing and archiving it is that we remember things. And thus the book will stay a prefect containter for filing and archiving.