BOOKTALKS｜Artists’ Books Series — Sol LeWitt

Introduction

The Art House Salon invited PAPER MATTER Founder Cai Yin-Chin to be the Book of the Year selection and to collaborate on the Artists' Books Series on the collection of Wen Sin Art. This lecture series focuses on exploring artists' books with a focus on artists' books from the 1970s to artists who are considered media/media artists who are still publishing as art practices today. Reviewing and content seminars, parsing the structure of books and their logic of generation, how they act as a complement or node in a creative plan; in other words, why do artists make books? And how his ideas flow, Sui has become the best medium for what art theorist/curator Lucy Lippard calls the best medium for the public.

‍“to recreate art, to start from square one.” — Sol LeWitt
“Reinventing art, starting with shapes.”‍

The first focus was on the American artist Sol LeWitt (1928 - 2007), as an artist's book pioneer, who wrote: “Books are the best creative medium for contemporary artists.” At the same time, he was also the co-founder of Printed Matter in New York (1976), without doubt a key figure in its practice and promotion, and continued to write from 1962 to 2002, until the years before his death, establishing the book as a platform for his “visual communication” and “spatial layout”. A personal theory of visual symbols, which ultimately became an important key figure in making the artist's books more scalable.

For an artist, books are sometimes a secondary medium and may be considered to explore preparation for more complex and challenging projects; however, for Sol LeWitt, the book's role goes far beyond these, it is key to understanding his personal entire artistic career, the ideas and settings of each book Publishing represents a stage in his artistic life, with a clear and systematic interpretation of his artistic methods and meanings, and strives to extend books as an extension of his ideas. Through this experience, he hopes to anchor Sol LeWitt's book writing practices and thoughts, and takes a look back at the artist. The contemporary possibilities of books and their energy as an artistic practice.