The massively enchanting (and meticulous) structures built by the installation artist Tom Bendtsen make me recall the endless fun of childhood fort-building, though of course my creations were on a smaller scale, and generally employed couch pillows, bedsheets, and cardboard boxes. Bendtsen uses books to make visual statements about the way our society constructs dialogue and that nebulous thing called knowledge.
He calls these installations “Arguments” and “Conversations.” The first Argument, unassumingly titled “Argument #1” (left), was made in his studio in 1994; the most recent one, “Argument #3(b)” (right), was exhibited in a home in New York City, in 2008. In an e-mail this week, Bendtsen told me:
“Argument #3(b)” was Bendtsen’s first piece constructed for the domestic sphere, and he hopes to continue bringing these smaller pieces into homes using books owned by the patron or specific to his or her history or interests.
“Argument #4(b),” which has been exhibited in various locations over the past five years and required twelve thousand books, contains a gateway. The spines, arranged by color, face inward, leaving a neutral exterior and a vivid interior. Bendsten describes the technique as using “books as pixels”:
Bendsten’s most recent piece, “Conversation #2,” was built for the Nuit Blanche arts festival in Toronto in 2008. The exterior, displaying fourteen thousand books, takes on a pastoral vista. Upcoming works, he says, will build on this concept, “further refining the quality of image created across the tower’s pixilated surface.”
I’m looking forward to Bendsten’s future creations. I admit, however, that for all their structural impressiveness, topical juxtapositions, and aesthetic beauty, part of me can’t help but want to crawl inside these magical little worlds made of words and play.