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Library of Eden, 2000. Detail from the performance Chelsea's First Street Vendor (Outside Barbara Gladstone Gallery) 37 books, oil paint, table, chair. A sister project to the Mountain sculptures, Library of Eden is a collection of over thirty altered travel books, including Frommers, Fodors and numerous hardback picture travel-logs that transform the urban world to an Edenic state. Page after page urban structures and objects are painted over with landscape or shrubbery, leaving only human activity amidst the green. By depicting businessmen, shoppers and locals in blurry surroundings that fail to correspond to the texts descriptions of the regions commerce and customs, the paint strips away the context of a specific place. Since it’s inception in 2000, the Library Of Eden has been installed in various locations including PS1/MOMA Contemporary Art Center, New York, CCS Gallery, Bard and the Kohler Center, Wisconsin. The Library Of Eden doubled as the performance Chelsea's First Street Vendor in 2000. I posed as a lone street vendor throughout the Chelsea district of New York shortly after the galleries moved there from Soho (where street vendors are numerous). I sat with the Library, outside different galleries every weekend for one month. Essays by Carrie Lambert and William V. Ganis, Greater New York Catalogue, PS1/MOMA. |
| all images © Jane Benson 2000-2019 |