January 15 - March 7, 1998
"As more and more of us spend more and more time staring at tiny luminescent screens firmly planted in our offices and living rooms, it may be a good time to reflect on what is so special about books. Like the essence of any art experience, our intercourse with books is intensely personal - one person speaking to another, across miles or centuries, or both. It is a conversation that reveals itself over time - hours, days, weeks. These are, it seems to me, the essentials. And while nothing is so fine to the touch as a well-made book, and words are often the most appropriate vehicles to convey thought and meaning, they are, to my mind, beside the point. And so this exhibition brings together books with no words, words with no books, finely-made objects that reference the long tradition of bookmaking craft, and a seemingly endless ribbon of computer-generated text. If in doing so we have blurred the distinction between artists' books and "other" works of art, it is not to add or remove anything from the genre, but simply because so much of what is interesting in any book is what goes on between the lines. It is particularly gratifying to be able to include in this exhibition a 'library' of books submitted by artists in the Gallery's slide registry. Books that can be touched and experienced over time keep the essentials before us in a way not always possible within the structure of the exhibition format. Our thanks to all participating artists."
- Janet Riker, curator
Exhibited artists included: Doug Beube, Meg Belichick, Carrie Cooperider, Maho Kino, Soraya Marcano, Alison Moritsugu, Susan Newmark, Mari Oshima, Miriam Schaer, Susan Share, Zhao Suikang, and Janet Zweig. In addition to work by these artists, Reading Between The Lines, includes a "library" of close to 100 books submitted in response to an open call to artists in the Rotunda Gallery's slide registry. Gallery visitors are invited to browse the books in the "library," which has been configured as part of a site-specific installation by Jason Walz.