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by Susan Hiller (2008)
Susan Hiller’s artist’s book pays homage to two images of aspiration, fantasy and sublimation. Yves Klein’s 'Leap Into The Void', and Marcel Duchamp’s 'Portrait of Dr. R. Dumouchel'. Both, Hiller contends, embrace the phantasmagorical; in the former, the shamanist’s defiance of gravity, in the latter an aura study in the clairvoyant tradition.
In her miniature book, Hiller has assembled images sourced from the internet, all paying indirect homage to these two artists' gestures. She presents a sequence of levitations, back-to-back with a series of images of auras, so constructing an occult legacy thriving in popular culture, in which the artist’s gesture is reincarnated in the democratic medium of the internet.
A special edition hardback, printed offset, colour and b/w, 160 pages, with a purple vellum binding, marbled endpapers, gilt edges, and housed in a slipcase, produced by Book Works Studio. Edited and designed by Jen Wu. 110 x 77 mm. The book is accompanied by a colour print from the Auras series, presented in a folder. Print size 233 x 203mm. Co-published by Book Works and the ICA, London, in a limited edition of 10, with both the book and print signed and numbered by the artist.
Out of print
