Book autopsy

Brian Dettmer  is work is post modern deconstruction at its best. Dettmer books are radically altered by slicing away parts of the book, page by page to reveal complex three-dimensional sculptures that suggest at alternate histories or faded memories. He calls this process reading “but in a visual and visceral way.” He never adds implants or re-locates anything only removes. “My work is a collaboration with the existing material and its past creators and the completed pieces expose new relationships of the book’s internal elements exactly where they have been since their original conception.”

Dettmer starts by sealing a books edges to create a vessel full of undiscovered potential. Then in a hybrid of archaeology and surgery he takes exacto knives, tweezers, and surgical tools to carve down through layers of page time and history exposing layers of text and imagery cutting around that which is of interest. As he excavates never quite knowing what will appear next, he stabilizes the pages with varnish to give the work some rigidity.

Time lapse video of a book autopsy 

Brian Dettmers artists statement reads

“The age of information in physical form is waning. As intangible routes thrive with quicker fluidity, material and history are being lost, slipping and eroding into the ether. Newer media swiftly flips forms, unrestricted by the weight of material and the responsibility of history. In the tangible world we are left with a frozen material but in the intangible world we may be left with nothing. History is lost as formats change from physical stability to digital distress."

"The richness and depth of the book is universally respected yet often undiscovered as the monopoly of the form and relevance of the information fades over time. The book’s intended function has decreased and the form remains linear in a non-linear world. By altering physical forms of information and shifting preconceived functions, new and unexpected roles emerge. This is the area I currently operate in. Through meticulous excavation or concise alteration I edit or dissect communicative objects or systems such as books, maps, tapes and other media. The medium’s role transforms. Its content is recontextualized and new meanings or interpretations emerge.”

Brian Dettmer has just finished a solo show in New York at the Kinz and Tillou gallery, which I sadly missed.
If you want to see more of his work then check out his website, his work really is something else.

briandettmer.com

A.MUse

Wearable sculpture for feet

Marloes ten Bhömer designs shoes that are unlike anything you have ever seen before. They are often described as "provocative and otherworldly" They have more in common with architecture or the Japanese art of origami than high street fashion.

grey glassfibre shoe

By taking art and fusing it with the cutting edge technology of CAM; Computer Aided Manufacturing, ten Bhömer challenges our pre-conceptions and allow us to re-discover shoes in new and interesting light.

Moulded leather shoe

The design language of these shoes is clean lines with the emphasis on materials, and construction techniques that are closer to architecture than women’s fashion. As the shoes do not conform to existing social codes and cliched styles they allow a rare freedom to explore design for art's sake and allow women to step outside the boundaries set in fashion design. The shoes then start to enter the realm of wearable sculpture or architectural forms.

Carbonfibreshoe #1 / 2003Materials: Carbon fibre
Shoes constructed from carbon fibre. The heels are placed on the side of the shoe, forcing the weight of the body to distribute of from side to side when walking.

‘In her efforts to change an object whose form has shifted only slightly over centuries and her wide-ranging investigations into unconventional materials, shapes and construction methods, Marloes ten Bhömer is a Hussein Chalayan for the extremities.’ (Wallpaper Magazine, 2005, edition 37)

rapidprototype shoe

The Rapidprototypedshoe, is an experiment in high-tech shoe making. The technology transforms a digital model of a person's foot into a physical shoe, with the click of a print button. Rapidprototypedshoe is built using an additive manufacturing technology, a three-dimensional printer using a laser to bind to together successive layers of a photopolymer material is UV cured. Rapidprototypedshoe is built in one go, but is designed in such a way, that it can be dismantled for the purpose of replacing parts.

Redmâchéshoe / 2003  Materials: Stainless steel and leather
The MARLOESTENBHÖMER™ leather-mâché technique is a leather laminating technique, which abolishes the use of a shoe upper pattern and allows for a varied wall thickness of the shoe. Redmâchéshoe uses rather big sheets of leather, defining the heel and abstracting the toe. The heel is a reinforced sheet of leather, attached to the side of the shoe curving down underneath the heel of the foot.

Beigefoldedshoe is origami like pair of shoes made of a single piece of leather folded round a stainless steel support .

‘Ten Bhömer’s experimentation with new shoes typology began when she was a child and slavered an old pair of her mother shoes in a paper-mâché to exaggerate their shape.

Twenty years later, when looking for a way to create a shoe of varying thicknesses, the Dutch designer remembered her mothers’ heels and began to experiment…’ (Wallpaper Magazine, 2005, edition 37).

Marloes ten Bhömer a London based Dutch product designer who graduated from the London College of Fashion & The Royal College of Art. She is considered one of the most promising designers of her generation and has exhibited worldwide. 

More of her amazing shoes can be seen here on her website    marloestenbhomer.squarespace.com 

Now just to find where to buy these shoes .....

A.MUse