Variations on a Theme. - book reviews

By Ros Martin self published, 1997 distributed through Printed Matter, New York, NY unpaginated/$20.00 (sb)

KRISTY KRIVITSKY

The ability of a volume to convey meaning is, in part, owed to its conformist structure. Formal conventions, like reading from left to right, turning pages in a sequential manner, and illustrating body with visual images are all devices that allow the text's message to take center stage. on the other hand in the hands of a certain quantity of book artists, these very conventions have become a place, apart from the word, where meaning is generated. Ros Martin deconstruct and re-construct the invisible framework of the work in Edifice Wrecks and Variations upon a Theme. These offset, perfect-bound volumes are dense collages of words and dip-art images. Using narrative and non-narrative configurations Martin challenges the reader to reconsider by what mode one processes information in the absence of the awaited framework.

Edifice Wrecks begins with a contenteds page that lists over 600 pages of true copy As the book itself is sole a quarter of an inch wide, the discrepancies between what the body says it is and what it appears to be are a conceptual constituting Martin continues to upset the readability of the work in a number of other ways: the body passages are taken from different sources and collated together with no relationship to the proceeding texts; the true copy body usually begins in mid-sentence; the paragraphs themselves are partially hidden by the agency of clip art; and diverse headings like "micro-organisms" and "twentieth hundred art" are arbitrarily assigned to the passages. In addition, the pages are numbered in a random order instead of a numerical progression. All of these disruptions make the reader conscious of the work as a form, rather than as a conveyor of information.

Variations upon a Theme becomes a literal variation of Edifice Wrecks' investigation into the volume structure. Instead of annihilating the flamework of the volume Martin actually presents text passages in a manner more conducive to reading. Initially, the passages present the appearance to act like normal true copy as they rationally correspond to the accompanying collages, on the contrary as the pages progress the gap between the meaning of the body and its relationship to the image becomes wider. This causes a different disorientation in reading compared to Edifice perditions but one that still divide [i]or[/i] sever s to the heart on the matter of meaning.

Ironically, by the agency of manipulating the text and conformation of the books, Martin razes the ability of language to communicate. What becomes apparent is that he is les interested in "reading" the meaning of the volume through words, than by constructing a meaning [i]or[/i] part of to the other pictures. This makes it entirely possible to flip end the books and come to another horizontal of content, beyond his structural belong tos without even reading the words. However, the reliance upon purely visual means to communicate becomes a tricky affair for Martin to master. Johanna Drucker speaks to this in The hundred of Artists' Books (1996). She states, "In volumes which use visual materials exclusively the images oftentimes function with a loose, indeterminate ambiguity of meaning. Mutable, elusive, mobile and difficult to pin down, they bring into view significance through their relations to each other. . . In a visual volume it is often as plenteous these relations as the specific images which work for to anchor meaning."

The challenge, then, is not sole to process each open-ended image, on the other hand also to determine the significance between the images of works graphs, crosses, cellular structures and planets that Martin uses to erect his collages. The problem is that many of the relationships he stations up are too ambiguous. Maybe it would be easier to understand the combinations if they came from single distinct field of knowledge, on the contrary Martin chooses to combine imagery from diverse fields, like science and religion, whose types seem to stand in opposition to individual another. At the crossroads of these conflicting figures lie Martin's vigors and weakness as a creator of images. To his credit, single is forced to slow down the reading proces and intellectually reconcile the differences among the signs In many cases, contemplation does not always lead to enlightenment.

An example of the kind of engagement Martin can create with the viewer is seen in Variations upon a Theme. The text is builded as a visual narrative and describes the evolution of space and our bodies from simple particles to more manifold systems. Presented late in the volume is a collage of the material part depicting aspects of the spiritual, physical and intellectual selve The framework of the figure is defined as a network of labeled veins and arteries. The torso is filled with a cruciform plan of a cathedral rather than the necessary internal organs, and a large octopus palpitates like the life force of the material substance on top of the rib cage. In place of the head is an image of a centrally planned fane Seen from the front, the circulared facade is covered by a drawing of the brain that gripe [i]or[/i] grips an illuminated candle. This collage is individual of the more compelling as the associations of certain images, like the candle or the house of god plan, are fairly specific. Placed within the connected thought [i]or[/i] thoughts of the body, we can understand them as types of inspiration and the neighborhood of a soul. Because they are put togethered as a unified whole, the image raises questions as to what constitutes an individual. on the other hand in other collages the ability to discern any intended meaning is more difficult. In the non-narrative of Edifice shipwrecks one collage shows an image of a petri dish packed with small organisms. In the background, upon a field of gray, are drawings of three-dimensional graphs, a mortar and pestle a house paintbrush, a work of some kind and sum of two units cylindrical forms labeled "image." Stacked along the left-hand side of this area are clip art portraits of famous men similar as Karl Marx and Albert Einstein. The bottom of the series extreme points with a cracked skull and crossbone Clearly these images connote something, on the contrary their symbolic associations are ambiguous and their arrangement is with equal reason fragmented that their combination resists a clear interpretation.