1—130: Selected works Ghassan Bishouty b. 1941 Safad, Palestine — d. 2004 Amman, Jordan.
2021
Artist book
1—130 is an artist book that revisits the artistic oeuvre and personal history of Ghassan Bishouty (b. 1941, Palestine – d. 2004, Jordan) through a process that draws on museological methods of indexing and object classification, lending this history and body of work a form of pseudo-visibility and order. As structural conventions are unsettled and the artworks and ephemera infused with acts of collage, ekphrasis, and storytelling, the book presents reflexive encounters with 130 selected paintings and sculptures made circa 1965–2004 in Lebanon and Jordan, concluding with an afterword by editor and curator Jacob Korczynski.
“Before its intentions, form or content are worked through, a book is encountered bodily. To hold, feel, and flip through a book is also to know it. Within the ekphrastic and paratactic strategies at work here, one constant is the collection of colour plates of digital collages. Acting as stations from which we depart from Ghassan Bishouty’s biography, the collages are an unsettled supplement to his daughter Nour Bishouty’s speculative history. First photographed, then pulled apart on a monitor before being spatialized for the page, Ghassan’s paintings return, separated in a search, as if arriving at a foundation may allow for an arrival closer to the artist and their intentions. Collages too, are containers.”
Excerpt from the afterword by Jacob Korczynski
Credits
Editor Jacob Korczynski
Graphic design Laura Pappa & Lotte Schröder
Publisher Art Metropole, Toronto and Moto Books, Berlin
The artist and Art Metropole gratefully acknowledge support from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the City of Toronto through the Toronto Arts Council and the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture AFAC.
The artist and editor would like to thank: Negar Azimi, Rayya Badran, Jon Davies, Sameer Farooq, Luisa Ji, Steve Kado, Nahed Mansour, Jerrold McGrath, Mohamad Mersal, Sohrab Mohebbi, Andreea Muscurel, Kimberly Phillips, Christine Tohme, Maisaa Youssef, and Omar Al Zo’bi
Related events
2022 Oct 2 - 3 — Volume 5 Montreal Art Book fair, Montreal, QC
2022 Sep 27, Book discussion with Swapnaa Tamhane, Librarie Maktaba, Montreal QC
2022 Apr 20 — Book signing and discussion with Leyla El Sayed Hussein, Beirut Art Centre, Beirut, LB
2021 Sep 21 - 26 — I Never Read, Art Book Fair Basel, Basel, CH
2021 Feb 25 - 28 — Printed Matter Virtual Art Book Fair, New York, NY
2021 Feb 25 - 28 — “Art Book Pop-Ups” BOOKED, Hong Kong
2021 Feb 13 — Book launch, Art Metropole and Motto Books in collaboration with Ashkal Alwan - In discussion with Jacob Korczynski and Rayya Badran
Reviews
Nour Bishouty’s 1—130: Selected Works Ghassan Bishouty b. 1941 Safad, Palestine — d. 2004 Amman, Jordan — Daniella Sanader, the Brooklyn Rail
“A Gathering Place for Objects That Have No Place”: Nour Bishouty's 1-130 - Kareen Estefan, the Journal of Visual Culture
