Primo Levi illustrated in tête-bêche artist book
Artist Jill Slosburg-Ackerman made a series of strange shelves, 32 of them, over 20-plus years. A base, a back, and often a shape emerging from the bottom, a form at hang and dangle. These shelf-sculptures were photographed in her studio, and then in the homes/spaces/domains of her collaborators, and now these images are paired with a short story by Primo Levi in a tête-bêche artist book. “Restless Shelves and Psychophant” shows these shelves, the basic form of them with their varied sculptural additions, testicular, nipple-like, orbs and eggs, shapes to cup or lick or tug; matted nesty coils, wood burls looking tumorous, tumescent, bulbous; other additions blockier and harder edged. And beyond the shelves, the images give a glimpse into the intimacy of people’s spaces: the soft tangle of an unmade bed; the red of a rug in the hall; a postcard of Elvis above a mirror. And what goes on the shelves becomes part of their strangeness as well: acorns, a pineapple, wooden models of bodies and hands, a photograph of gourds, a taxidermied bird, daffodils, a reading lamp. In the accompanying short story, published in The New Yorker in 1990, Levi writes of a device called the Psychophant: A person places their finger on a button and the device creates a form that represents their essence. “On the tray there appeared a tawny, shapeless, squat, vaguely conical mass made of a rough, friable, dry to the touch,” is one example. “It created from nothing,” Levi writes, “it invented: it found, like a poet.” Or like an artist. Slosburg-Ackerman will discuss and sign books on Saturday, March 16, at 2 p.m. at Gallery Kayafas, 450 Harrison Ave., in Boston. For more information, visit jillslosburg-ackerman.com.
A new book by artist Jill SlosburgAckerman combines her uncanny shelf sculptures (above) with a short story by Primo Levi.