William Davies King
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William Davies King STATEMENT Bibliolages are altered books, but unlike most such works, they do not mutate a book into a sculptural object or some sort of assemblage. My pieces start and remain as books. By a process I call hyper-illumination, I transform them into entirely new books. One or more other books–sometimes dozens–fuse new images and meanings into the already folded (complex) reality of what a book is. “Mash-up” is a term that sometimes applies, though it suggests a digital manipulation, which is entirely absent from my scissors-and-glue technique. I think of myself as inhabiting a book–a host–as a kind of parasite of the most beneficial sort! It’s a symbiosis I seek, a co-existence that does more than any individual element could. For that reason, no single image can convey what the whole bibliolage does. A book of paintings by the Fauvist Maurice de Vlaminck takes on a new population of what scientists now believe to have been multi-coloured dinosaurs. A book about “kitsch” painting by the Norwegian artist Odd Nerdrum takes on the lurid forms of human anatomical illustration. The art of the Far East meets the “far out” psychedelic posters of the 1960s. Andrew Wyeth hosts the Commedia dell’Arte. Daumier occupies Frank Lloyd Wright. A book of black-and-white urban photos by Jessica Lange gets fused with heroic images by Kehinde Wiley and African natives photographed by Leni Riefenstahl. The history of dance unfolds on a gravity-lite lunar landscape. I might take the role of the oxymoron (Norman Rockwell + Soviet Union) or the paradoxist (Big Farmer Big Jesus) or enter the deconstruction zone (Edward Weston nudes + circus clowns). What books give me I return with interest. BIO I am a drama and theatre history scholar by profession, but a lifelong intensive collector of non-valuable yet worthwhile things by custom. The history of how that habit/passion/obsession became a defining element in my life and art I traced in Collections of Nothing (University of Chicago Press), which was called one of the best books of 2008 by Amazon. The latter part of that essay/memoir explores the bridge I was beginning to make between collecting and collage, which resulted in my invented form, the bibliolage. I had long accumulated eye-grabbing and yet unloved “nothing” books, such as illustrated dictionaries. By cutting out the images and reassembling them, I reduced a large pile of books to one. That practice of condensation, which reduces a discordant, even paradoxical multiplicity to a vibrant singularity–a hyper-illuminated book–became my fascination. The incisive capacity of collage, which is implicit in the act of cutting/pasting, gave me a way to shake up or vibrate the settled aesthetics to be found in most books. But it’s important to note that the end result of my work is a book, not something to hang on the wall. My art goes into something that should be read. This makes exhibition a challenge, though I have shown my work at galleries in the Central Coast area of California and online at williamdaviesking.com. ARTIST CONTACT [click to email] IMAGES
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