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COURTESY PAULA COOPER GALLERY
 

Bent Onyx

Artist book by Tauba Auerbach
2012
Edition of three and two exhibition copies
17 x 6.5 x 6.5 inches
43.2 x 16.51 x 16.51 cm

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The book Bent Onyx appears to be a slab of stone. Artist Tauba Auerbach scanned a piece of onyx repeatedly after grinding off one small layer at a time. The scans were printed digitally and became the pages of the book. The result is that the viewer can page through the stone tomographically, like an MRI scan. The edges of the book are hand painted to align with the images of the stone printed on each page.

Bent Onyx was exhibited in Tauba Auerbach’s solo show, Float, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, May 5–June 9, 2012.

From the Paula Cooper Gallery online exhibition page:

“In addition to the paintings, the exhibition will present new photographs and sculptural objects, including Onyx, a deconstructed material volume printed and bound in book form. As Auerbach once observed, ‘A book is an X-axis. The format is almost always linear; the content, bound in a prescribed order, marches single file.’* Inspired by a desire to upend this theory, Auerbach resorts to tomography (the method of producing images of the internal structure of an object), allowing the viewer to slice through a solid block of onyx layer by layer, revealing the twists and turns of a mineral narrative.” *Auerbach, Tauba, “Out of Order: Tauba Auerbach on Carsten Nicolai’s Grid Index,” Artforum, January 2010

Binding co-designed by Daniel E. Kelm and Tauba Auerbach. The book was constructed by Kelm assisted by Leah Hughes.

Printing by Bridgeport National Bindery.

Digital offset printing, Mohawk superfine paper, Japanese tissue, hand painted edges.

Held in private collections.

Bent Onyx was exhibited in Tauba Auerbach’s solo show, Float, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, May 5–June 9, 2012.

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Here you see Bent Onyx standing upright—spine on the left, fore edge on the right.

The edges of the book are hand painted to align with the images of the stone printed on each page.