| Event Description |
'in readable ardor'
artist cheryl sorg takes viewers on a mesmerizing journey through great works of literature and the creative process
WOW - how many hours did that take to make?! This is the most frequent initial response to text artist Cheryl Sorg's huge, intricate works constructed from books, and the answer is hundreds. Sorg is a booklover, to put it mildly. And her love of literature manifests itself in an obsessive cut-and-paste process in which she takes a book (two copies of a book, actually, in order to get both sides of each page, and therefore the book in its entirety), dissembles it line by line (then, often, word by word) and re-configures the text - in readable order - with a mother lode of clear tape into a variety of large-scale and complex forms inspired by the themes and imagery within their stories. "A humble but passionate translator" she calls herself, using books to create art in which a viewer can get lost, as in a well-told tale.
Several of these huge pieces, along with photographs and sketches documenting her arduous process, will be on exhibit in September at the Eric Phleger Gallery in Leucadia in a show entitled 'in readable ardor'. The two largest and most ambitious pieces included take us on journeys through ancient Greek and Roman mythology - "Bodies, I have in mind and how they can change to assume new shapes...." (Metamorphoses), and "Sing in me Muse, and through me tell the story..." (The Odyssey). The Metamorphoses piece consists of fifteen text spirals, one for each chapter of the book, morphing from a circular spiral in the first to a butterfly spiral in the last. The text of The Odyssey takes a long and meandering journey, much like Odysseus himself, the winding lines finally creating two eight-foot diameter circles mounted on plexiglass that hang one in front of the other.
Also featured will be a new piece, destined to be the largest piece in Sorg's oeuvre to date, an optical journey down a deep well, through a vortex of words increasing in size from just millimeters high in the center to over an inch high at the outer edges, increasing just one percentage point in size per page between. The text is that of Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, a story in which the image of a descent into a deep, waterless well plays a central role. The piece will be displayed in-progress, at six feet across, installed on the floor where the viewer can walk directly on it and peer downwards at it. |
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