Menu
The New Contemporary Art Magazine

The Book Sculptures of Guy Laramée

Guy Laramée sculpts and “erodes” books into mountain landscapes. The artist says “the erosion of culture” is an ongoing theme in his sculptural work and paintings. The artist has been active for three decades, with several other disciplines in tow that include live music, theatre, and literature.

Guy Laramée sculpts and “erodes” books into mountain landscapes. The artist says “the erosion of culture” is an ongoing theme in his sculptural work and paintings. The artist has been active for three decades, with several other disciplines in tow that include live music, theatre, and literature.

“My work, in 3D as well as in painting, originates from the very idea that ultimate knowledge could very well be an erosion instead of an accumulation,” the artist says. “… Contemporary art seems to have forgotten that there is an exterior to the intellect. I want to examine thinking, not only ‘what’ we think, but ‘that; we think. So I carve landscapes out of books and I paint romantic landscapes. Mountains of disused knowledge return to what they really are: mountains. They erode a bit more and they become hills. Then they flatten and become fields where apparently nothing is happening. Piles of obsolete encyclopedias return to that which does not need to say anything, that which simply IS.”

See more of the artist’s work below.

Meta
Share
Facebook
Reddit
Pinterest
Email
Related Articles
Canada based, Macau born artist Ann Hoi breathes a sense of life in her meticulous and extraordinary paper sculptures. There are usually monochromatic, portraying mysterious hooded figures, young children in the company of bizarre creatures, and small deformed bodies, each as fanciful as they are unsettling. Since graduating from Ontario College of Art and Design University, Hoi has completed only a dozen works to date, owing to her detailed and painstaking process that begins digitally.
For years, Raúl de Nieves has blurred lines between fine art and fashion design, positioning himself as an inspiration for the likes of Vogue and Lady Gaga. He is perhaps best known for his beaded shoe-sculptures, crafted in a rainbow spectrum matched by his figurative painting. De Nieves makes his debut in Los Angeles tomorrow with "I'm in A Story", at MUSEUM as RETAIL SPACE (MaRS). Inspired by his native Mexican folklore, Catholic symbolism and fairytales, the exhibition loosely adapts two stories; Colin Self's chamber opera The Fool (which starred the artist) and the episode of Saint George and the Dragon.
Los Angeles artist Roberto Benavidez has reimagined characters from Hieronymus Bosch’s work in an likely sculptural form: piñatas. These life-sized versions of figures from Bosch works like “The Garden of Earthly Delights” bring 15-century sensibilities into three-dimensional existence. The work blends both traditional Mexican and European influences.
Though we have developed a culture that places us at the center of the universe, the forces of nature will continue to exist with our without mankind. This is a notion that Japanese sculptor Ocoze explores in his mixed-media works where trees and plant life appear to overtake man-made objects and architecture. The small-scale, refined works use combinations of plaster, steel and resin with found objects. At times Ocoze's miniature structures appear to be thwarted by the burgeoning plant life, while in some pieces buildings are sculpted in what looks like a symbiotic relationship with the trees. One of Ocoze's recent works, in which a castle rests atop a moss-covered skull, brings home the message that life is impermanent and nature will ultimately prevail.

Subscribe to the Hi-Fructose Mailing List