Parodying traditional assembly manuals à la Ikea, Italy-born, Toronto-based visual artist Flavio Trevisan intricately and meticulously details the step-by-step construction of a complex automated machine. After a protracted building process, the machine ends up breaking down within moments after its long-awaited activation. Readers unversed in mechanic knowledge never learn the actual purpose of this teleological contraption before its collapse — instead, its only depicted function is to serve as a stray butterfly’s rest stop.
In this neatly digitally-printed, perfect-bound “handbook,” Trevisan’s crisp, black-and-white diagrammatic illustrations testify to his background in architecture and exhibition design — even as this publication spoofs the malfunction of standardized structure, one cannot help marveling at his visual command of the very same.