Aaron Flint Jamison
From December 9, 2011 to february 11, 2012
Opening on December 8, 2011
Aaron Flint Jamison is an artist particularly engaged in the field of edition. His artistic work comes as a wide range of reflections on the book and the object. He can be printer, typographer, editor and of course artist at the same time.
He often works by assemblage and combinations: a piece of furniture, a poster or a publication which all push the link between representation, production, functionality, presentation and distribution to the edges of its simplicity, its obviousness and its impact. Each object merges technical and aesthetic potential and conceptual accuracy. Aaron Flint Jamison is between the artist and the technician, between the craftsman and the inventor.
For his magazine Veneer – which he edits and even prints sometimes – as well as for other publications, production and distribution are organised in a traditional manner, distributed slowly, close to manual know-how. Sent by post, handed out in the neighbourhood, or even more free from material constraints through electronic distribution, these publications’ spread is infinitesimal and rhizomatic. Veneer started in 2007, is published two times a years and will not go past 18 issues. Today, the series is at its 8th issue. Once completed, this series will be arranged in a miniature bookcase designed and made by Jamison, the magazines melting perfectly into their case. Quite often indeed, the works of Flint Jamison are made of one single move only: the object and its mode of presentation.
Each new issue of Veneer is special in its form – typography, printing, pagination, cutting, cover, binding – which is inspired by the content: essays by artists, scientists, translations, re-editions, statistics… In the meantime, each magazine remains coherent with the series itself (format). Some issues are hand-made with the help of friends or colleagues and we have here a rich collection of editorial ideas, technical and playful, that explore the transformations of the book itself. Pages glued together or impregnated, torn covers, inserts of little notebooks or postcards. From one number to the next, this publication is alive, in motion and remains a source for new editorial ideas.
Aaron Flint Jamison has an extremely precise and refined conception of edition: his publications and their content play a metaphorical game with texts and images illustrating the editorial act and production itself. From the body of a produced object to the modes of exchange, from the hand-made to high technology, all parameters are used as genuine aesthetic, poetic and conceptual material.
For the Centre d’édition contemporaine, Aaron Flint Jamison has created an artist’s publication, combining quires with different papers, unexpected, poor and precious: marbled paper, newspaper, glossy paper, carbon paper, rag paper. The keyword and underlying theme of this publication The Stutter proves to be a perfect illustration of this movement of break, repetition and multiplication present in this new publication, from page to page and image to image, texts, patterns, technical lists, reproduced 250 times. The final title of this publication is nevertheless BLOCK 2. It is printed in offset, typography and colours, texts and images. The printing as the binding brings together the hand-made and the manufactured. The set altogether makes 112 pages, 7 quires, the format is 12 x 21 cm, hardcover, bound in linen, glued and sewn, square spine, foil on the cover, colophon printed on a card inserted between the last page and the endsheet. This booklet is an edition of 250, of which 100 are kept for the 2011 members of the Centre d’édition contemporaine. The exhibition bathes in a cold, electric and radial light, responding here to the technical texts on geothermal exchange processes chosen for the publication BLOCK 2 and to the flux flowing through this exhibition.
