ENTFORMUNG

By Robbin Ami Silverberg
Brooklyn, NY: Dobbin Books, 2020. Edition of 65 variants.
Dobbin Mill papers, Archival inkjet photos on Mohawk Superfine, One Brownie camera bxw photo (1968)
 
Robbin Ami Silverberg: "May 2019 I found a handwritten text on vellum about Kurt Schwitters & his collage concepts. I don't know when I wrote this text, so I cannot credit myself or someone else for its contents. I read it carefully, curious to see what I had chosen to keep these many years, but its contents peaked my interest and I started working on an artist book made from a collection of my paper fragments. I imagined the book to be a document (referent) of the different artworks I had made over time.
 
"April 2020, in this time of sheltering at home, I designed this work anew, in light of our COVID reality. Schwitters had turned inward as a retreat from the insanity of his world. I, too, look inward and backward but also forward ... to save myself from the present & our particular poison.
 
"Entformung - a neologism coined by Schwitters to describe the transformation of old materials into new art.
 
"Each copy in this series has the same text printed onto the strips of the front cover that fold back separately. The collaged pages of each book block is a unique mix of handmade papers and photographs of the collage layers: a blend of material & image, glued, sewn & paper clipped together.
 
"Each copy also has book cloth chosen to match the collage inside: 1 copy blue Asahi silk ; 2 copies beige Asahi silk; 1 copy Green Asahi silk' ;1 copy taupe Buckram."