But time is not linear, it is a marvelous tangle where, at any moment, points can be selected and solutions invented, without no beginning or end.
Architecture and the Book-Space
A slender, medium-format artist’s book by the Swiss Émilie Ding offers an indirect but enlightening insight into her work. Rather than her abstract concrete sculptures or geometrically patterned black-and-white paintings, Ding here presents black-and-white photos of Brutalist concrete architecture arranged to fill each page. Between two and four illustrations of varying sizes and formats are positioned on each page to leave narrow white margins between and around them. Adept formal deployment of cropped details and alternating perspectives creates a unique picture space that is sometimes reminiscent of abstract paintings and sometimes has elements of the three-dimensional and sculptural. The work can thus be seen as an agreeably unpretentious artist’s sketchbook. The text is pared down to the essentials: apart from the unconventional five-line title creating an aura of mystery in the top left-hand corner of the white front cover, the only other text is the colophon on the book’s last page.
