ΙΣΤΟΣ / WEB – Contemporary Artists’ Books

Does the volume of a book obstruct the view?

From its inscription within the rigid aesthetic hierarchies of classical antiquity and early modern thought, which enforced a strict philosophical separation between word and image rooted in Platonic thought, through its radical reconfiguration in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the artist’s book has progressively emerged as an expanded and heterogeneous artistic field in which textual, visual, material, and conceptual registers are continuously entangled and critically renegotiated.              

But how can the artist’s book continue to matter within today’s digitally saturated environment, shaped by algorithms, platforms, and planetary-scale computation, where linear reading gives way to simultaneity, networks, and database logic? Can it still be conceived as an autonomous, physically resistant medium, or must it instead be rethought as a critical interface mediating between image and text, materiality and immateriality, archive and cloud? It is precisely these questions, concerning the survival, transformation, and renewed agency of the artist’s book within today’s cybernated mediascape, that the group exhibition ΙΣΤΟΣ / WEB – Contemporary Artists’ Books seeks to pose and to explore through the works of the sixteen participating artists.                                                                     

Within this conceptual horizon, ΙΣΤΟΣ / WEB – Contemporary Artists’ Books unfolds as a spatialized artist’s book in its own right, as the entire Cercle Cité is transfigured into a concrete yet simultaneously immaterial book-body. The title Istos/Ιστός, derived from the Greek word meaning web, designates the connective structure that binds the exhibition together, linking spaces, artworks, and different media into a continuous relational grid and creative network. Through the contributions of eight Greek and eight Luxembourgish contemporary artists, the exhibition articulates multiple manifestations of the artist’s book, extending from the tactile intimacy of paper to intangible and virtual forms, from handcrafted objects to electronical presences. Video projections, sculpture, photography, digital works, mixed media, and poetic interventions converge to form a multimedia environment in which the book is no longer confined to codex form but emerges as a holographic experience. The exhibition space itself becomes an experiential library; an expanded web where words generate images, volumes determine perception, and the act of reading is transformed into a holistic encounter.                                                     

In addition and in sustained dialogue with these diverse practices, the exhibition is further enriched through the inclusion of selected artist’s books from the holdings of the Bibliothèque nationale du Luxembourg (BnL). These materials comprise seminal works by internationally recognized figures whose artistic trajectories both resonate with and critically refract the contemporary pieces presented in the exhibition. By synthesizing haptic embodiment with abstract non-corporeality, the sixteen participating artists reclaim the artist’s book as an imaginative site of metaphorical thought. The exhibition thus operates not merely as a display of works, but as a cognitive and poetic space that reactivates imaginal perception as a vital counter-force to the flattened flows of the digital present.  

Maria Bourbou, artist & curator
Aias Christofis, assistant curator

Opening

Thursday April 23 at 6:00 PM

Free admission, no registration required

Free guided tours every Saturday at 3:00 PM