NOTA FALL 2018 Diana Zlotnick artgal333@gmail.com Newsletter on the Arts The newsletter has a new function. I write about what I like and what I see. I will also publish writing by the artists, museums, and dealers that I think are significant, incorporating press releases on art that I see. There are no definite publication dates and it is free.
-DZ Paula Hutchings’ Walter Benjamin: à Paris & Ailleurs, Released 6/3/18 How inventive can one be? Paula Hutchings creates an artist book that concerns locations where Walter Benjamin stayed; not what he did, not who he saved, or what he wrote, but a book with no numbered pages, nor the dates when he stayed, on each page is one hotel address. Paula Hutchings, the artist, and Giovanna Pizzoferrato, the book designer, keep the attention of the viewer, not only by what is there but by what is not there. The viewer becomes a participant in the piece by asking questions. Rather than writing another summary of history, Hutchings is creating something new, something for the viewer to do, a conceptual educational device. Hutchings makes one wonder about Benjamin’s life, and inspires one to research him on the computer. The pages are unbound, so the viewer is even invited to add one’s own pages. The content is not clear. Just as one becomes totally mystified, the viewer’s curiosity is regained by finding the table of contents at the end of each section, rather than at the beginning. The design is on transparent vellum papers, so all printed images on the page can be seen from other pages. All these subtle changes keep the viewer’s attention span engaged. One looks at these things slowly, and longer and longer than most inventive artworks. A book that is an artwork, a nice change from reading. Hutchings is taking the book format further into art, by creating a work based on her understanding of Benjamin’s life. I spent two hours looking at the piece, unanswered questions are the aesthetic.
– DZ http://www.paulahutchings.com Edition of 50 artist books – a great bargain at $100. The folio was a finalist for the Walter Benjamin Prize.