Stunnig landscapes carved out on books by Guy Laramee

Quando pensamos num livro de estudo ou numa enciclopédia, pensamos sempre neles como sendo algo que contém conhecimento. Normalmente se quisermos aprender alguma coisa temos de os ler, mas o designer Guy Laramee arranjou outra forma de o fazer. Ele utiliza estes livros para criar paisagens deslumbrantes, paisagens essas, que ironicamente representam a degradação da cultura humana. Ele acredita que o "conhecimento pode ser entendido como uma erosão em vez duma acomodação", afinal as culturas crescem e são substituídas por outras novas, e tornam-se de facto obsoletas. Guy Laramee pretende explorar a arte, ele acha que a arte contemporânea se "esqueceu" de que existe um lado "exterior" ao intelecto, ele diz mesmo: "All Ideas Look Alike".

Most people read books on a regular basis, we gain knowledge and obtain lessons that might be applied to our own life in the near future. Designer Guy Laramee has a different viewpoint on paper. He uses those think and heavy book that we remember from College/High school to create beautiful sculptures. By transforming the edges of vintage books, he is able to create stunning mountains, glacial landscapes, plateaus, and deep valleys. Ironically his works represent the degradation of human culture. He has a strong  belief that “ultimate knowledge could very well be an erosion instead of an accumulation.”  He says that the title of one his pieces is “ All Ideas Look Alike”. Contemporary art seems to have forgotten that there is an exterior to the intellect. I want to examine thinking, not only “what” we think, but “that” we think.

Guy Laramee é um artista multidisciplinar com mais de 30 anos de experiência, já trabalhou como: escritor, director, compositor, como fabricante de instrumentos musicais, como cantor, escultor, pintor.. o seu trabalho já passou por países como Canadá, Estados Unidos, Bélgica, Alemanha, França, Suiça, Japão e América Latina.

Guy Laramee is an interdisciplinary artist who, in the course of his 30 years of practice, found his way through such varied and numerous disciplines as: stage writing, stage directing, contemporary music writing, musical instrument design and building, singing, video, scenography, sculpture, installation, painting and literature. He received more than 30 grants and was awarded by the Canada Council for the Arts the Joseph S. Stauffer award for musical composition. His work has been seen and heard in Canada, United States, Belgium, France, Germany, Switzerland, Japan and Latin America. (via inspiration feed)

Among his sculptural works are two incredible series of carved book landscapes and structures entitled Biblios and The Great Wall, where the dense pages of old books are excavated to reveal serene mountains, plateaus, and ancient structures. Of these works he says:

"So I carve landscapes out of books and I paint romantic landscapes. Mountains of disused knowledge return to what they really are: mountains. They erode a bit more and they become hills. Then they flatten and become fields where apparently nothing is happening. Piles of obsolete encyclopedias return to that which does not need to say anything, that which simply IS. Fogs and clouds erase everything we know, everything we think we are."  

(via colossal)