Doug Beube

Doug Beube is internationally known as one of the few book artists working with aesthetic and intellectual integrity and creativity in the genre of altered books. He received an M.F.A. in Photography, at the Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, NY and his work is collected and exhibited ubiquitously throughout the world.

The Grand Design, 1996, an altered book, 9" x 11" x 2".
Using the original title, "The Grand Design," by Franz Josef Strauss, portions of the book's printed matter are excised by drilling out all the words one at a time, a process that displaces the text's narrative content of unifying both Germany and Europe. Overlapping pages of hollowed out letters with frayed edges remain as ghostly shadows of the text's former shape. Since the obliterated words can no longer be read, the book becomes a memory of a memory. What we see in place of the original text is a mysterious, fragmented calligraphy of broken words. Each page is both a palindrome and palimpsest, a white veil through which the underlying page is glimpsed. When a page is turned the veil remains. A visual--rather than a linear--read is necessary to understand the meta-language created by this altered syntax of disparate letters and empty spaces.

Just as the black ink has been erased and ripped away from the white paper of pages of the book, leaving a veil of frayed edges, when a nation is ethnically cleansed in order to create one homogeneous society, devoid of specific racial groups, the fabric of a nation is forever torn and lost, but never forgotten.

Hypertext, 1993/96, an altered book, 9.5" x 6.5" x 1.5". A play on the computer form, which for the viewer is a process of reading many pages simultaneously or, is the ability to read a text/book in ways that are non-linear. This series incorporates found books with texts or pictures which have been deconstructed by cutting through layers of paper with the use of a power sander. At a glance, viewers may grasp the essence of the process of reading a book by participating in a whole read allowing the viewer to see through numerous pages, giving a flat page a sense of depth. As if looking at a cross section of the cambium rings of a tree, the inside edges of the book's cut pages, reconstitutes it into a tree-like form. As a result, both literally and metaphorically, the book is presented as an object of impermanence that references its original materiality as organic matter that is both fragile and transient. The original title of the pictured book is Patterns of Abuse.

The 'veiled' portion of the book is accomplished by drilling out the page one word at a time which fragments its content. The overlapping page of hollowed out letters with small, oblong, frayed edges remain, a shadow of the former shape of legible words. Since the obliterated text can no longer be read, the book becomes a memory of a memory. What we see in place of the original text is a mysterious calligraphy, pierced and fragmented by the gouged and rough edged spaces in the center of each letter. The page has become a palimpsest, a white veil through which the underlying oval shape is glimpsed. When the page is turned the veil remains. Rather than a linear read, a visual read is necessary to understand the meta- language created by the syntax of disparate letters.

Recent Solo Exhibitions
2005 The Jewish Museum, Philadelphia, PA
2003 "Revision,’ Limn Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2002 "REVISION,/REVISION," Frumkin/Duval Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
2002 "Inflorescence." SPIN Gallery, Toronto, ON
1997 "Hypertexts," University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA

Selected Collections
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, ON
Black Eagle Apothecary Museum-Istvan Kiraly Museum, Budapest, Hungary
Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY
Special Collections, Univ. of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta
Allan Chasanoff, New York, NY.
Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
Jack Ginsberg, Johannesburg, South Africa
Arthur Jaffe, Miami Beach, Florida
Mueller-Schwann Publishers, curated by Helmut Löhr, Nuremberg, Germany
Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
National Library of Canada, Special Collections, Ottawa, ON
Private Collections in, Belgium, France, Germany, Washington, D. C.
Ruth & Marvin Sackner Archive of Concrete Poetry, Miami Beach, FL
Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, NY
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN
York University, Toronto, ON

This page is maintained by Marshall Weber.