The Anderson Gallery is pleased to present Buzz Spector: A Library for Babel
Public Lecture, Thursday, Oct. 20, 7:30 PM, Harmon Fine Arts Center (FAC) 336
Opening Reception, Friday, Oct. 21, 5-7pm, 2505 Carpenter Ave., Des Moines
Since the mid-1980s, Buzz Spector has been making art by stacking thousands of books in configurations that are usually architectonic and always enthralling. Every structure made of books calls attention to its interior in a manner unlike other building materials. Since books are made to be read, the loyalties of the art viewer and book reader are divided, since responsible viewers do not touch the art while readers must do so in order that the book fulfills its purpose. Spector’s Anderson Gallery installation, A Library for Babel, inclines more toward browsing than building, but like the Biblical tower it is named after, this work confronts the infrastructural paradox of the differences between private and public language, between thought and text, and between the surface of a structure and the depth of its meaning.
