SBC Gallery of Contemporary Art

Articulating the nature and significance of books as objects in our lives, Judging Books by their Covers presents a group of artworks that range from large-scale photographs to paintings of pulp fiction covers in which artists have represented and recontextualized the book and its cover.

Featuring the work of 2010 Hugo Boss Prize winner Hans-Peter Feldmann, Montreal artist Lorraine Oades, Marc Joseph Berg, Gayle Johnson and R.B. Kitaj, the exhibition considers the design and aesthetic qualities of printed books that make them effective both as avatars of knowledge and as a ubiquitous presence in the everyday world. While the exhibition’s focus is not the current transition to publishing in digital form, this change is an inevitable part of its general context. In this sense, these works may therefore serve as a vehicle for considering the implications of the book’s dematerialization.