Friday, October 25, 2013
through
Sunday, December 15, 2013

MAN IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY, 2012
Hardcover book, acrylic varnish, glass
9¼” × 6¼” × 1½

Sculptor Brian Dettmer’s Elemental begins and ends as raw material, the physical texts that remain when histories and books slip away into the bits and bytes of the information age. Encyclopedia sets merge to form tall towers and pixilated patterns; books on games reveal new rules and matrices; the ordered chaos of a thesaurus follows a simple, single word through myriad permutations; and repurposed state flags piece together altered visions of political power. Carving, cutting, and sanding, Dettmer adapts authoritative materials and images to amplify their physicality, interrogating their semantic significance in an accelerated digital world. Elemental challenges viewers to consider what if anything is left when the traditional codex flirts with obsolescence in a pivotal moment of media change.

Elemental is a traveling exhibition made possible by the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia and its Working Artist Project Fellowship. Presented by the John B. Hurford ’60 Center for the Arts and Humanities and the Mellon Creative Residencies Program, Haverford College.