8th International Artist’s Book Triennial Vilnius 2018
in the Leipzig Book Fair
Theme: Memento Mori
Time: 15-18 March, 2018
Location: Halle 3, H501
“IAKH: Globus Galerie + Edition Lebensretter”
Leipzig Book Fair, Germany
Artists Selected for the Exhibition in Leipzig Book Fair 2018
“Edition Lebensretter” for the Leipzig Book Fair 2018 published the catalogue “27. Jahresschrift für Künstlerbücher und Handpressendrucke / Edition 2018” with the article about the 8th Artist’s Book Triennial Vilnius 2018.
In Cooperation with:
Internationale Ausstellung für Künstlerbücher und Handpressendrucke IAKH
Mr. Jost Braun / M.F.A. / IAKH-Direktor
The text in the Catalogue in English:
8th International Artist’s Book Triennial Vilnius 2018
“8th International Artist’s Book Triennial Vilnius 2018” is a lasting international educational project. Exhibitions of this project are notable among the leading ‘artist’s book’ exhibitions in Europe and even worldwide. There are several reasons why it’s significant to its participants and visitors. First, it’s because of its very high quality of exhibits and subsequently growing public interest with the ‘artist’s book’ as a sort of inter-disciplinary art, approachable to various artists, students and even children.
‘Artist’s book’ brings embodiment of particular ideas in both conceptual and handicraft levels. Thereby the triennial of the ‘artist’s book’ operates as a bank of ideas for graphic designers, book binders, typographers, artists of conceptual and installation arts, teachers and students. It’s a unique non-commercial project with practice of careful selection of the works, highly recognized by artists, museums, galleries and universities. During the period of 20 years exhibits of the Artist’s Book Triennial have been exposed in Vilnius (Lithuania), Leipzig, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Rheine (Germany), Lille (France), Silkeborg (Denmark), Venice, Vercelli (Italy), Seoul (South Korea), Halmstad (Sweden), Salzburg (Austria) involving selected works of 838 artists from 65 countries.
International Artist’s Book Triennials have been organized periodically since 1997. Various and provoking, topics of the triennials encourage artists to reflect upon them in a conceptual way by overstepping their individual experiences and moods, as well as rejecting their former snobby commercial understanding of what a ‘beautiful’ book is supposed to be, even to leave seeking for it. In that way a book as a most secret phantasy of the artist, as a not written poem or uncreated film, a book-as-an-object is opposed to a functional, illustrated, perfect bound book printed on a good paper. One will not find a common informative text and pictures in the artist’s books as they speak about the artist and its surrounding world by their own form. They speak to us by their most bizarre shapes and artistic means, in time, and in simultaneously closed and opened space.
The topic of the current Exhibition – ‘Memento Mori’ – was supposed to stimulate reflection upon life, not about the upcoming death that is inevitable in the material sphere. It’s about an immortal human, to whom earthly ‘sleep’ is only an open door to eternity, to eternal life in Bliss. To whom a tough or violent death, or a most horrid act of terror may become a road of martyrdom and sainthood leading to Heaven. But how numerous are those ‘already dead’ by their own will, even though they yet walk among the living. What is it that still frightens them? Being the children of death, why do they continue to scream and weep, squeal and try to escape its creeping embrace? What are they running from? Is it the non-existence, for they only recognize this brief period of life as existence? But what is so terrifying about the non-existence if there is no eternal bliss or suffering within (or beyond) it. After all, everyone is going to get ‘that which they believed in’. So, is there a sense in the efforts to escape death, considering its temporality and humble chances to prolong one’s existence by no more than several days in the natural condition of move towards non-existence since the very birth moment? Thus, let us not become the dead, marching towards their dusky grave. Let us rather become the children of light, awaiting the eternal Bliss.
Kestutis Vasiliunas
Curator of the Triennial
Translated to English by Jurgita and Andrius Sprindziunas
© Artist’s Book Creators Community
