Sumptuous Allegories of Nothingness

Have words unknown – evil remnants of
a meaningless phrase – ever sung upon
your lips?
 

Rodney Graham, Cours de linguistique générale, 1988

Sumptuous Allegories of Nothingness brings together the artworks by Rodney Graham (1949 – 2022) that take the book as their starting point (and often end up again as books).

With a bibliophile sensitivity to the latitude offered by ‘world literature’ from the late 18th century onward, Graham begins to experiment with seemingly minimal but actually extreme adaptations of renowned books during the 1980s. What begins as the artist’s soft spot for prolonging books with the help of literary loops eventually gives way to a parasitic authorship in the form of pseudo reprints – works made his own by claiming the writing. In books whose design he again models after other books, Graham not only takes on famous writers; he truly inscribes himself in their literature, in their voice and style.

Anton and Annick Herbert discover Graham’s work during the 1980s through Yves Gevaert’s publishing house. The Brussels-based publisher will ‘publish’ works by Graham that transcended the book object; Graham’s book adaptations after all do not limit themselves to the book volume. To meet the demands of exhibitions – an uneasy context for art in the guise of a book – the artist designs reading devices and book sculptures that transform his book interventions into unconventional reading experiences.

Sumptuous Allegories of Nothingness offers an opportunity to discover Rodney Graham’s literary art practice during the 1980s and 1990s through the varied adaptations and presentations of one and the same source or bibliophile anecdote, whether it concerns Lewis Carroll, Ian Fleming or Richard Wagner.

An exhibition realised in collaboration with Nikolaas Verstraeten.
 

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Stéphane Mallarmé, cited in Rodney Graham, White Shirt (for Mallarmé), Spring 1993, 1992, Brussels: Yves Gevaert Éditeur