A–A’, B–B’
This heavyweight three-part catalogue in a grey cardboard slipcase reflects through its design the conceptual art of Simon Starling, becoming a sculptural object in its own right. Starling’s work explores a large painting by Tiepolo (1696–1770), which today exists in two separate parts: one in Edinburgh and one in Turin (Agnelli Collection). At exhibitions in Glasgow and Turin, Starling showed full-sized copies of the respective missing sides – plus part of a Fiat 125 that he had sliced in two. This car model was a favourite of Giovanni Agnelli. For the catalogue, each of the two parts of the painting was transferred section by section to the pages of a separate book. Both books also contain a number of blank pages corresponding to the extension of the missing part. The covers show a part of the Fiat, while the insides of the covers are illustrated with a small diagram showing how the painting corresponds to the pages of the book. And that is all: there are no further texts, captions or page numbers; all the books contain is a straight reproduction of the paintings, which have been cut up and stitched together in a Swiss brochure format. The third part is a slim blackand- white volume containing all the information about the project. The performative gesture is successful, and although the end result makes an ideal addition to book collections, it is not decorative, but rather self-aware and playful. The age-old question of what constitutes a book is re-posed in unexpected fashion.
