Have you heard about facebook? I’m sure you have, but I’m also sure you don’t know about ‘bookface’. If you’re thinking, it’s another social networking site like facebook then you’re absolutely wrong. It’s actually name if a artwork that is created by an artist Long-Bin Chen. Long-Bin Chen is a sculptor who works with books, phone books, catalogs, and magazines as his media. He lives in New york.
Using traditional sculpture techniques and through the skillful manipulation of a band saw, the artist hand-carves the out-of-date books, newspapers, magazines, and computer papers into beautiful faces, rooms, and Buddha heads that resemble carved stone or marble. Long-Bin Chen’s work has always combined cultural contexts—East and West—and artistic forms—sculpture and literature. Though I always hate to see a book “destroyed”, I can’t help but appreciate what the substrate brings to these sculptures, the ink on the pages adding the strata one might find in stone.
So why the face? Why not make a sculpture of a chair or a car? First of all, the face is where the brain is, says Chen. The media of the book needs the brain, the head. The book’s “face” is in the back, the human face, on the other side. When he came to the United States in 1992 to the School of Visual Arts in New York, his classes were so full of discussion on postmodern art and all its various bickering theories that he became unable to speak or respond; everything became too difficult, chaotic, and to the point where language could not respond. Long-Bin shut down, shut his book, turned it over, and began cutting.
Books, for Chen, are still seen in terms of their shape, color, font, material and space (where most of us see them for their words and meaning). Chen’s this ‘bookface’ artwork is so much detailed, neat, and beautiful. It’s hard to guess either these sculptures are made of books or marble. He believes in ‘Making something new out of something old’. Chen’s aim is to keep this art alive. Undoubtedly his creativity is extremely incredible. Long-Bin Chen’s work has been exhibited internationally in museums and galleries including The Museum of Arts and Design, New York; The Museum of Chinese in America/MOCA, New York; MassMOC; the Holland Paper Biennial; and the Taipei Cultural Center. His work was included in the group exhibition “The Missing Piece” organized by the Dalai Lama Foundation.
