Sunday, September 03, 2006

Book Cell 2006

This was yesterday's main photo op!
Hard to describe, this is a work of art, titled as above, on display till January 07 in the José de Azeredo Perdigão Modern Art Centre of the Gulbenkian Complex, a place I adore.
Created by a Czech artist, Matej Kren, it consists of 1000s of real books fromed into a hexagon and hollow inside. As you can,see the whit light is a path invited book, art & hex-addicts to walk across it.
Now comes the good part: if you look carefully at what I've tried to recreate here, you'll see that to either side of the path are prismatic mirrors reflecting the towers of books. As if that wasn't enough, Kren has also fitted a ceiling about 3 metres up doing exactly the same - more mirrors!
I took the picture below the collage looking directly down, so you get some of the effect I was experiencing. The mother holding on to her little girl also conveys the sensation you feel that if you were to step off the path, you would fall. Look up, reflected books, no sense of ceiling; look down, same thing, nofloor. just endless books. We humans are funny...what was there to fear? But I can tell you, most people crossed that path in trepidation, white-knuckled. Which maybe explains why the last pic is blurred, but I wanted to show you the whole work. The power of literature & mirrors!


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9 comments:

ana said...

Sweet prison. I must check it out.

Meg said...

This is so cool. That's what I should do with all the books I've bought but haven't read and have stacked on the bedroom floor!

CANTOROUCO said...

Eis as fotos que eu gostaria de ter feito na semana passada quando estive no Museu de Arte Moderna - Gulbenkian. Fantástica a vertigem dos espelhos, não?

Desejo-te um Setembro - na doçura polícroma dos vinhedos nortenhos.

;=)

ana said...

Hey meg, have you ever heard of BookCrossing?

Check it out:

http://www.bookcrossing.com/home

Anonymous said...

That's quite amazing. If you're not much of a reader of books, is it designed to fall on your head?!

Joana said...

There is a short story by Jorge Luis Borges, in which he tells about an endless library whose rooms are shaped like hexagons

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel

marjan hols reis photography said...

great to see this what a good idea for art.
It is nice to see you are getting out again, can see in the way you write and your pictures you feel better, I hope it will stay.

Emmanuelle said...

J'adore l'odeur des livres

Mami Reis said...

que fotos extranhas e interessantes.Tu sim, fazes exelentes fotos-