Photography Courtesy of Galerie Kudlek van der Grinten, Cologn

In our electronic age, the book doesn’t have it easy. It’s up against so many gadgets designed for instant gratification, it’s no wonder reading is on the decline. But the book will persevere; it’s been through much worse — burnings and bannings, for instance. With this kind of history, it makes sense that a visual artist would choose an object so fraught with meaning to drill holes in, bolt down in layers, and inject with silicone rubber.
Jonathan Callan, who burst onto the London art scene during the Young British Artists sensation of the early 1990s, has been creating sculptures from old, discarded books since 2003. One of his intentions in these sculptures is to explore language’s fundamental shortcomings, so he puts his tomes to the test. Callan’s books nestle, cluster, and cling to each other; their vibrant pages bend and swerve, coming together like a meeting of the minds. His larger pieces resemble the cross section of a huge tree while some of his smaller sculptures conjure up Hanta’s book bundles in Bohumil Hrabal’s Too Loud a Solitude, a 1976 Czech novel celebrating the power and indestructibility of the
written word.