Brian Dettmer’s Exhibit at Saltworks Gallery

Don’t despair if you didn’t see the Salvador Dali exhibit at the High Museum before it left town. (If it makes you feel any better, I rated the Dali exhibit up there with the Leonardo Da Vinci “doodles” from the previous year, but I am no critic— strictly a poseur, and not a very good one at that.)

But if you are interested in books as art objects or more specifically sculpture, there is still time for you to see Brian Dettmer’s New Worlds to Conquer exhibit at the Saltworks Gallery (located near the west side Six Feet Under).  The exhibit closes Saturday, January 15th. 

Dettmer, who lives here in Atlanta, takes hard-cover books—older books with elaborate illustrations (e.g. Military Preventative Medicine, Encyclopedias of World Travel)—and carves through them page by page, pulling out words and pictures from the book. This creates a stunning visual and reminds us how the richness of books can convey new meanings beyond just reading them. A better description and interpretation of Dettmer’s work and technique can be found at the Art Critic Atlanta website.

Shown here is Dettmer’s carving of the book, The War on All Fronts (photo courtesy of Brian Dettmer and the Saltworks Gallery), but photos really don’t do the work justice. As mentioned earlier, it’s the perfect exhibit for those who like books and for those who don’t like books—I guess it can be one of those 101 Uses for a Dead Cat type of experiences.