Mrs.5000, 2011
Limited edition in tripartite "exquisite corpse" format with photocopied illustrations and text from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
I have shown "you," the hypothetical blog reader, this one before, but not since 2008. Each "page" of this book is a text from Alice and Wonderland set opposite the original engraving of the character that it describes.
However, each page is cut into thirds, and the whole is cleverly engineered so that, by flipping the little page-thirds, you can create weird new characters with weird new texts to describe them.
It is like an elaborate game of "Exquisite Corpse," with the surreal setting of Alice and Wonderland serving as a natural jumping-off point into further absurdities.
We have noticed a remarkable tendency of many readers to carefully turn all three page sections together, in order to reconstruct each original character from its three parts. It is an entirely logical thing to do, but at the same time is a quietly hilarious defeating of the whole point.
This is I believe the only book that Mrs.5000 has made an "edition" of. There's more than one! In fact, I believe it is possible to purchase one from the very terrific 23Sandy gallery, located quite near the intersection of 23rd and Sandy here on the beautiful East Side. Oh hey, it's almost time for holiday shopping!
1 comment:
Hrmm, and it's so small it could easily fit in my bookshelf, too!
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