[artbooks] Fw: Uber Gallery: Janis Nedela - Running Backwards #2

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anusha <anusha at ubergallery.com> 
21/10/2007 15:13

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Uber Gallery: Janis Nedela - Running Backwards #2






 




 
 
 




Running Backwards #2
Jánis Nedéla (AUS)
1 November - 1 December 





Opening:
Thursday 01 November, 6:30pm
Guest Speaker: Dr David Bromfield,
Art Historian and Writer

RSVP: 30 October 2007
Phone: 03 8598 9915
Email: info at ubergallery.com 

Head Drawing Performance
by the artist Janis Nedela,
from Margaret Sutherland's (b.1925) sheet music for Sonata (Violin and 
Piano I-III)

Artist Talk
Sunday 04 November, 3:00 - 4:00pm
Works on show in Running Backwards #2 and Head Drawing performance work 




'When the [beautiful] object is a book, what exists and what no longer 
exists? The book is not to be confused with the sensory multiplicity of 
its existing copies. The object book thus presents itself as such in its 
intrinsic structure, as independent of its copies. But what one would then 
call its ideality is not pure. A very discriminating analysis must 
discriminate it from ideality in general, from the ideality of other types 
of books and, in the area of art, from that of other classes of books 
(novel, poetry etc) or of non discursive or non book art objects (painting 
sculpture music theatre etc)...

How to treat this book. Is it a book. What would make a book of it. How to 
take it. Have I the right to say that it is beautiful.'1
Jacques Derrida
Janis Nedela has worked with the book and its form, as it approaches the 
art object, for more than a quarter of century. These transparent books 
and double pages are recent outcomes of his constant contemplation of 
worlds folded into and beyond letters, lines and pages. The infinite 
narratives and kaleidoscopic images revealed in Tom Phillips' A Humument 
prompted him to find his own worlds within worlds. But, inspired by John 
Cage, Nedela chose to read between the lines, to substitute one word, one 
letter, for another, to replace a word with a colour, so as to temper the 
iron-clad inevitability of the text, any text, with delicious chance 
discoveries, new worlds for old. He calls this process, this attitude 
which becomes form, 'coding', his way of making art by having fun. Nedela 
does not seek the weariness of absolute creation. His acrylic books form 
folds between the ready made universe and its doppelganger reflection. 
Every palindrome is a pleat in language, a stepping-off point for the 
unknown third term. The dense reflective transparency of acrylic traps 
each letter like a fly in amber. Glance sideways at any book and you will 
see the text bounced from page to page, world to world.

'Instead of working with and on the pages I wanted to make the pages come 
alive. My initial idea was to encase objects in acrylic and make them look 
like a book of 'objets' that tell a story. I thought about that years ago. 
It was the suggestion that text could be a three dimensional object that 
intrigued me. I liked the business of the prism with acrylic. If you look 
at it on the edge when there are words or lines in it you get these 
multiple reflections and mirrorings happening inside the book. Look front 
on and the books are just flat. It's the optical accidents, the chance 
effects inside the book that interest me.

'I love text and language. I am fascinated by the way a word can make 
another word, especially in English, if you use a mirror to reverse it. 
Put the two together, for instance NO and ON, and they will make NOON, 
three words in all. The more I researched palindromes on the internet the 
more intrigued I became. I found people who dedicated their whole lives to 
working with palindromes. One man has written the world's longest 
palindrome; it's a novel you can read from front to back. I found the 
original Latin palindrome. There are computer code palindromes, musical 
palindromes even Japanese palindromes. Palindromes are another version of 
coding. You can only see three words if you the have the mirror. It's 
banal but delightful, my idea of fun, just playing with text.'2

The poet Mallarmé first understood the book as at once one and many, a 
cascade of possible worlds. If not flesh, the word substitutes for the 
material fabric of the universe, a substance to be remoulded and modelled, 
always open to chance encounter. The book is like a body without organs, 
open to everything. Nedela's transparent books make this clear. Duchamp 
made his Large Glass on glass so that one might see through it to the 
space beyond which was, therefore always part of the work. Nedela takes 
transparency much further; every possible universe may be caught in each 
book. The book is nearly always one and many, a single compact object and 
a series of leaves or pages, all caught in the cryptic tailspin of a 
narrative. Each leaf offers unique entrances and exits to other stories or 
arguments. Each page is a door. Some open, some do not. A book may also be 
an infinite series of empty frames through which one may choose to step. 
As a frame, a book may contain everything, anything, or nothing. Sometimes 
the text is blocked so that one only has its scaffolding.

'The Typo series derives directly from my original book objects. The lines 
are lines of blocked out text. When I was a paste-up artist there were no 
computers. Instead of writing in the words for publication, you identified 
the text areas by just ruling in lines. It's cancelled text, another form 
of coding.'3
John Cage once suggested, writing of Robert Rauschenberg, that the best 
way to achieve a diffuse overall attitude to painting was to show two 
panels side by side, thus splitting the viewer's attention. In Documents 
#1-#30, Nedela has taken the binary form of the open book to achieve this 
same end. Each pair is a reworking of his earlier treatments of books and 
pages, a doubled coding, one folded against another. In #17, the left hand 
page has been coded with blue tacks and in the right, the text has been 
placed with a landscape of stains. The book and its form will always 
remain central to Nedela's work.

1 Jacques Derrida. Parergon in The Truth in Painting translated by Geoff 
Bennington and Ian McCleod University of Chicago Press Chicago and London 
1987, page 49.
2 Janis Nedela. Interview with David Bromfield, August 21 2007.
3 Ibid.

David Bromfield, 2007 
 
 
 




Über Gallery 52 Fitzroy Street St Kilda 3182 Australia
info at ubergallery.com / www.ubergallery.com



 
 
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