Twenty Questions: A Curious Approach to Artists’ Books

January 21–April 12, 2025
Kohler Art Library, University of Wisconsin–Madison

Curator’s Statement

As editor of Artists’ Book Reviews, I have written monthly reviews for nearly six years. I try to approach each book with the same curiosity that first drew me to the field of artists’ books. This exhibition invites viewers to cultivate their own curiosity by presenting a range of books received by Artists’ Book Reviews and others from the Kohler Art Library’s Artists’ Book Collection.

There are five questions at the heart of my approach: What is it? How is it a book? Why is it a book? What does it mean? Why does it matter?

These questions address four aspects of an artists’ book: material and process, form and structure, content, and context.

Since 5 × 4 = 20, I like to think of artists’ book appreciation as a game of twenty questions (although the real number is often greater). It is this game, this curious approach to artists’ books, that this exhibition aims to model. 

While each book is interrogated individually, themes do emerge. The books in Twenty Questions mark time, measure space, bear witness, exchange ideas, and transform meaning.

Twenty Questions inspired an online learning module on artists’ book criticism, also titled A Curious Approach to Artists’ Books: https://learn.library.wisc.edu/artists-books-curious-approach/#/.

Case 1: Artists’ books bear witness.
Case 2: Artists’ books exchange ideas and transform meaning.
Case 3: Artists’ books mark time.
Case 4: Artists’ books measure space.
Islam Aly, Mare Nostrum, Al Motawaset, 2022.
Carol Chase Bjerke, STONE/FIELD: field/stone, 2004.
Marc Fischer, Public Collectors Police Scanner, 2021.
Maria Brito and Bruno Neiva, Ballroom Etiquette, 2020.

Checklist:

  • Hartmut Abendschein, Asemic Walks
  • Alexandra Agostinho, meu coração bate sem mim
  • Islam Aly, Mare Nostrum, Al Motawaset
  • Carol Chase Bjerke, STONE/FIELD: field/stone
  • Maria Brito and Bruno Neiva, Ballroom Etiquette
  • Combat Paper Project, Freedom
  • Maureen Cummins, Newark 1967
  • Shannon Davis, Controlled Burn
  • Marc Fischer, Public Collectors Police Scanner
  • Tara Homasi, The Circus
  • Michelle Maguire, Kelsey McClellan, and Kristin Texeira, New Color in the Times of Slow Coffee
  • Kevin Osborn, Tropos
  • Benjamin Rinehart and Rachel Simmons, Fractured fathers
  • Niki de Saint-Phalle, My Love
  • Buzz Spector, A Passage
  • Claire Van Vliet, Night street
  • Heather Weston, A Diction