Join us Saturday, March 4th, 4-6 PM for a book launch and celebration of El libro que tiende a desaparecer at Printed Matter / St Marks!

Announcing our newest window installation, El libro que tiende a desaparecer [The Book That Tends to Disappear] by Simón Ramirez, on view now at Printed Matter / St Marks through March 12.

Ramirez’s book consists of pages printed on delicate thermal paper protected by a sleeve made out of tinted film—the same vinyl used to tint car windows. Because of the material, each time light touches the surface of the paper, the depiction of ocean waves that fill the horizontal spreads fade. The shoreline, shown as impossibly frozen in time, reminds us of the ephemeral nature of the book. Untouched, the book’s light-protective envelope preserves the images, which will fade upon exposure to light. As such, viewers are presented with the conflict of whether to experience the work completely at the expense of its eventual disappearance, or preserve its archival form by keeping it, so to speak, under wraps. The artwork implies its own disintegration in its materiality. With the rhythm of each page turned, we are reminded of the inability to capture a wave on a shore.

The window installation is a spatial deconstruction of the book’s material components. Printed thermal paper rolls waiting to be cut, used staples, and vinyl scraps cohabitate with the finished books on the window sill. To the glass, Ramirez has affixed a sheet of the tinted film that blocks most of the sunlight, but allows tiny sunrays to enter through constellation-like pinhole perforations. Passers-by will also be able to witness the disappearance of Ramirez’s book in real-time through one of the pages arranged to face the window, exposed to sunlight and left to inevitably fade over the course of the exhibition

Simón Ramirez (1988, Colombia) is a Brooklyn-based artist using mixed media, drawing and painting to investigate ideas of displacement, estrangement and intuition. He is co-founder of Miriam Gallery, an artist-run curatorial platform and artist-book-bookshop that seeks to disseminate and democratize artistic practices through collaboration, contemplation and play.

Published by Backbone Books El libro que tiende a desaparecer

Photos by Oswaldo Garcia