Hard cover, 64 pages
23,5 cm x 16 cm
Published by Künstlerhaus Bethanien and Studio Luc Derycke.
Since 2004, Gruber has been working on the series Studies in Sculpture, which explores critic Rosalind Krauss’s assumption that all bodies exist not only in space, but also in time. The unique design of the book by Studio Luck Derycke functions as a third essay that gives another interpretation to the work, and that of the other two authors, Esther Dotan and Guy Emmanuel.
“The paradox pending in Assaf Gruber’s series Studies in Sculpture constitutes a distance from Internet productiveness, draws away from it, defines resistance and, in a way, implies an agenda for art. The series seeks a subject for a dialogue in order to materialize as an independent presence. It is like a play in need of an actor. The moment of display is an opportunity for the artist-gleaner wandering in the liminal zone of a (Duchampesque) strategy of choice to conduct a dialogue with a viewer, as subject to subject, and transform potential into actuality— albeit conceptual; transform the virtual into an ‘object-event’ in a real space, or more accurately—into a relevant situation. Where does the choice of excerpts lead? Where does the sculpture-without-sculpture, the pedestal-without-a-sculpture lead?"
—Esther Dotan, from the essay Studies for Accelerated Sculptures or Sculpture on Hold, (2012)