Gravures

Gravures is a project by David K. Ross.

This is a commissioned work for galerie B-312's twentieth anniversary exhibition "Revus."

Each of the images in this series are taken from the one of the eleven livres d'or (guest books) which have been used by galerie B-312 to document exhibition openings and the presence of gallery visitors over the past twenty years. Barely visible in many of these images are the "gravures," or impressions left by visitor signatures and comments as well as the faint outline of announcement cards which have been intermittently affixed to the book's pages. This practice of "tipping-in" an exhibition announcement card has been used by the gallery since its inception as a way to mark the opening of a show and to enable future readers of the guest books to distinguish the signatures and well-wishes left for various exhibitions.

As a corollary to this project, I created a new livres d'or for the gallery's 20th anniversary. The handmade guest book was assembled to commemorate the anniversary exhibition and is comprised entirely of the blank, unused pages from all previous eleven guest books. The empty pages were carefully extracted and then bound into a single book which now preserves all of the paper stock and various book formats from each of the previous livres d'or.

Photos: Paul Litherland/galerie B-312