BOOK OF DUST

“Book of Dust” is a Collaboration between Jonathan Barcan and Lian Fang

This project is an unconventional Book Arts installation that investigates the transient qualities of found objects and impermanence in human culture. This piece was created as part of a partnership and residency program between The University of New York, at Buffalo, and The Central Academy of Fine Art, Beijing. Integral to this collaboration was meandering through Beijing and Buffalo where both artists collected a variety of curious materials in their respective foreign environments that helped to guide both aesthetic and conversational dialogue during the making process. In addition to conventional art tools, each individual piece was constructed using some combination of common household objects, items that carry cultural symbolism, and pencil rubbings ofthe cityscape. These included brooms, nails, sand, paint, copper wire, or cooking spices, Joss paper (fake money used for burial ceremony), incense, and imprints of the sides of buildings, streets, or pot hole coverings. Through material and form, both artists intend to transcend eastern vs. western ideology through works that are assemblages of fragments of everyday life.