Curated by Thom Collins
The book as a metaphor for the “legibility of the world”: Per Hans Blumenberg’s 1981 study, the idea is both ancient and contemporary. For R. H. Quaytman, it offers a framework through which to systematize the discourse of modern painting in all its complexity and contradictions. Since 2001, the artist has been dividing her work into discrete, site-specific groups she calls chapters. All nineteen are being brought together for the first time, in an actual book and an exhibition. For the latter, “Index, Chapter 20,” Quaytman will select two images from each group, making new versions or reworking the original panels. This chapter constitutes a “still life” of her practice of the past decade, assembled “to see where the story is leading.”
Translated from German by Olivier E. Dryfuss.
