Towering Books

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:

My earlier book towers (Arguments) sought to reflect the fragility of human arguments, which are mostly inflexible structures in a history that is fluid and ever-changing. These towers are an attempt to make physical the Argument. History and the interconnectivity of subject binds these earlier pieces together, as titles and topics play off one another across the surface of each work. These book structures are at once cohesive, monumental and fragile. They appear solid but in fact are not; they are stacked and on the verge of collapse. In a way the act of creating these works was a futile attempt to make order of an overwhelming sea of knowledge.

“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”:

These newer works have become concerned with color and form almost exclusively, creating a random interconnectivity between subjects across each structure surface. Any historical connections are left to chance as color is the primary indexing system (a detective novel and a university text on accounting could share a cover color, say blue, and find themselves side by side).

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.