Summer Reading

July 9 – September 18, 2021

Center for Book Arts
28 W 27th Street, 3rd Floor
New York, NY  10001

Curated by Ann Tarantino & Lindsey Lanfried

In the high season of leisure reading and scholastic book challenges, Center for Book Arts presents Summer Reading, an exhibition of works by contemporary artists who take creative approaches to the book, text, and language. In this exhibition, the book is simultaneously complemented and subverted. Artists investigate the tradition of artist’s books as artistic structure, storytelling in visual art, the narrative possibilities of language, and the object-ness of book material in circulation. Including prints, sculptures, and works on paper that explore the design and aesthetics of language, this exhibition celebrates the relationship between reading and making. Summer Reading extends beyond the gallery walls to include featured reading lists culled by the artist participants and associated lending lists for all ages, developed with our local partner libraries.

This group exhibition features works by Breanne Trammell, Cassie Tompkins, Colette Fu, Dan Walsh, Diane Samuels, Erik den Breejen, Jill Moser with Charles Bernstein & Major Jackson, Joy Drury Cox, Lenka Clayton, Lesley Dill, Mary Ellen Bartley, Meg Hitchcock, Michael Mandiberg, Shanti Grumbine, Skye Gilkerson, Tauba Auerbach (Diagonal Press), Travis Head, and Ward Shelley.

Information about the exhibition’s limited edition catalog can be found here.

Launch F18 Magazine: Joy Drury Cox & Erika Mahr in Conversation

In the spring of 2020 Joy Drury Cox, Erika Mahr and Sam Trioli began a conversation that casually carried on throughout the course of nearly a year.  Weaving in and out a multitude of events in life and the world at large, the conversation between the three of them captured a moment not only within their own artwork, but the meaning of that work in this moment in time. 

Read the conversation in full here.