sm books (Robin Waart)
SM (Robin Waart) books attempts to make publications that will stand and stand up for themselves, creating paper worlds that draw viewers-readers into new ways of experiencing print media. Invested in the idea and expression of the book, in publishing and ‘making public’ as an artistic practice, SM’s projects synthesize preexisting, word-based materials such as movie subtitles, book pages, dedications to explore what publishing can do, what a book can be —without nostalgia— as a medium and technology of circulation that has structurally but almost invisibly, rooted itself in our thinking about the world, whether it is through portable paper objects, the Mac ‘book’, web ‘page’ or pocket sized iPhone.
“Robin Wood” makes work of the point of contact between words and worlds: books that look like they are made of wood, self-consciously filling, even merging with the infrastructure of many a bookshelf. With a faux wood exterior of its, the book documents Robin’s collection of ‘wooden’ books, categorizing characteristics such as author, genre, year, but also (aided by a dendrologist) identifying the types of tree each is trying to imitate – reminding us that the word ‘book’ etymologically goes back to the bark or beech that inscriptions were carved into. The book is conceived in collaboration with Vilmantas Žumbys whose design for Evol/Love was nominated one of the Best Dutch Book Designs and one of Lithuania’s Most Beautiful Books (2020).
We look forward to our table at Miss Read hosting the pre-launch this new publication.
Launched on the occasion of the exhibition at IDEAL Art Space in Leipzig (March-May 2024) and connecting the two parts of Robin Waart’s Lakeside Library, the double publication contains 22 postcards, one by each artist participating in the project: presented in pairs, above and below each other – layered in such a way that by flipping through or reshuffling them, the cards speak to each other in new and eccentric combinations, both similar to and different from its companion postcard book Footnotes I have never seen (2022).
Ending on a list of all the authors, publishers and institutions that contributed to the library, the booklet is held together by a contribution by Lena Sieder-Semlitsch that is not a postcard: endpapers embracing the library booklet which are at the same time reproductions of the marbled curtains that Sieder-Semlitsch made for Wörthersee, Wörthersee (July-September 2023): they are what remains after the cards have been sent away.
Copublished by Stichting Mei (sm books) and backbonebooks, the publication has been made possible with support from the Mondriaan Fonds.
Evol/Love is a project in three parts: a billboard series, installation and publication connecting 160 subtitled movie stills that all contain the word Love. A collage of voices and definitions arranged in alphabetical order, from ‘Love is where you find it’ (A: A Date with Judy, US 1948, 00:22:37) to ‘But even if it’s a little late, love has a way of coming back to you’(Y: Yeonae/Love is a Crazy Thing, KR 2005, 01:38:02), but mirrored and read backwards to sound like its antonym: evil.
Selected as one of the Best Dutch Book Designs (also student jury) and one of The Most Beautiful Books of 2020 in Lithuania; shortlisted for Best Book Design from All Over the World (2022)