Libraries are not made, they grow

Technical Sheet

Title

Libraries are not made, they grow

Year

2008

Dim

variable dimensions

Technique

photocopies on walls

Exhib.

Libraries are not made, they grow, Italian Academy at Columbia University, New York, 2008 Easy Come Easy Go, Casa Testori, Novate Milanese (MI), 2011

Notes

"In my work I’ve often resorted to photocopy. Af ter I had photocopied the whole Analix Forever gallery in 2007, the very next year I found myself in New York, at the Italian Academy at Columbia University. They had in here a wonderful (aesthe tically) library, huge, warm, comfortable: it invited you to lie down on big couches and read books all day long, if only all the volumes weren’t disposed randomly and an index or a catalogation weren’t missing. All that because, as it seems, the whole Ita lian Academy’s big books collection was been sold (I think to the Columbia) and the italian Gover nment had thought only after many years to send tens of boxes containing thousands of loose books, from the litterature ones to the art history ones. Di sposed like that, the volumes looked actually beau tiful and new (some of them were still wrapped up, but they were basically unusable. I’ve been really impressed by the concept of “frontside”, were the book became a piece of furnishing (the fact that the libraries of the Academy were empty, back in time, it had sicken several Columbia’s professors, that notice them while taking a walk on the Am sterdam Avenue), and because of that I decided to create by myself the books index, just by photo copying the whole library, volum after volum, and re-installing the photocopies on the actual books. In the meantime, to facilitate the usage of the new photocopied library, I binded two different copies of all the approximately 1360 images used in two big catalogues of two volumes each. The metonymy as far achieved, the container for the content (the library INSIDE the books), allowed the visitator to leaf quickly through every back of the library’s books and find thus, in an easier way, the wanted volum. The idea of rebuilding this “travelling” library at Casa Testori starts from here: the original images’ f iles are been readapted to the measures of the room that was Giovanni Testori and his nephews’ studio, and these files cover now the walls simula ting the presence of books and shelves. The fact that this library is, for its own nature and from the beginning, easy come, easy go, makes it especially suitable to the walls of Casa Testori, where Giovan ni used to have his real library, or his collection’s pictures that, after having been studied and evisce rated, they were straightaway replaced with new paintings by different authors."

Andrea Mastrovito in "Easy Come Easy Go" Exhibition Catalogue, p. 107

Technical Sheet

Libraries are not made, they grow, Installation view At Italian Academy at Columbia University, New York, 2008

Libraries are not made, they grow, Installation view At Italian Academy at Casa Testori, Novate Milanese (MI), 2011

Libraries are note made, they grow, b/w photocopies on 1260 A4 sheets divided into two volumes measuring 29.7 x 21 x 7 cm each, two editions (one on white sheets, the other on colored sheets)