The Book of Lies, Volume I, II, & III
January 13 – March 23, 2007
Featuring works by over five dozen artists
Organized by Eugenia Butler
ArtNight Reception event: Saturday, January 13, 6:00 – 8:30pm
1639 18th Street, Santa Monica
Conceived as a global conversation about truth and lies held through the medium of works of art and poetry, The Book of Lies is a book that is not a book, a work of art made of other works of art using the lie to explore our relationship with truth. As Anton Coron of the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris states, “We are living at a moment when the difference between truth, lies and reality is becoming increasingly hard to discern.” Given the diversity of artists, the investigation of the lie ranges from the lie as a philosophical object to the lies experienced by the citizens in a war to the lies of childhood, love, and beyond.
Curator and organizing artist Eugenia Butler’s recent public exhibitions include The Arc of an Idea, a retrospective survey of 35 years of work at the Ben Maltz Gallery at Otis College of Art and Design, and A Laboratory With Velocity, a 25 person conversation on the future, which took place at the William Andrews Clark Library, supported by the French government.
The eighty works of art include pieces by artists and writers Georganne Deen, Kim Jones, Julia Lohmann, John O’Brien, Edgar Arceneaux, Sally Elesby, George Evans, Joan Jonas, Barry Sanders, Arthur Sze, Matthew Thomas, Kim Abeles, Lynn Aldrich, Carolee Campbell, Steve DeGroodt, Janet Fitch, Tom Marioni, Kim McCarty, Michael C. McMillen, John Outterbridge, Mary Rakow, and Madam X.
The exhibition will include three private dialogic dinners set in the gallery primed to engage the question, What is the lie with which I am most complicit, and what is the truth that most feeds my life?, on January 12, February 16, and March 16.
Other exhibit features are an analytic work about the book’s structure by Kim Abeles, sound works by Steve de Groodt and Richard Haxton, and video by Madam X.
Artist Richard Newton will perform his contribution, “The Square Root of Two, An Exploration of the Irrational,” on Feb 17 at 3pm, 7pm, and 10pm.
Eugenia Butler (Curator):
“Sixteen years after the Book of Lies project began, the first three of its four volumes are finished. The entirety of the work has taken on form and content far beyond any original imaginings. It has become a rounded voice coming from many voices, a discourse about truth in the territory of the unknowable. Its power derives from the strength and integrity of the individual pieces, from the communal voice, and in single, intimate interactions.
“Each volume is a work of art unto itself that developed from the process of creating it, from the individual works themselves and from the relationships between the parts and the whole. At a certain point a bigger vision broke through – something beyond previous understandings — surpassing the initial ideas to become a singular artwork consisting of discrete and powerful works of art. Its subject matter is truth, lies, and the intimate power of a true work of art.”
Click on the links below to view artists and poets biographies:
Book of Lies, Volume I
Book of Lies, Volume II
Book of Lies, Volume III
