The exhibition Marginalia draws our attention to the overlooked elements that coexist in carefully designed books.
Removing the text and images from a selection of art books designed by Anja Lutz in close collaboration with the individual artists reveals the nondescript details: the margins, the edges, the backgrounds, the spaces between the lines…
Each book is unique in its choice of format, material, layout, composition, and rhythm. The selected pages underwent a process of transformation in which Anja Lutz dissected them with surgical precision, layer by layer, removing their vital parts and revealing their skeletons – the actual support of the content. The results are filigree grids, fragments of images, and traces of the layout that form intricately layered compositions of voids, exposing the hidden relationships between the pages.
Marginalia is an investigation into the anatomy of books – the physical object, its materiality, and inner structure. It is an attempt at mediating the emptiness. The quiet and yet eloquent remaining spaces seem to have their own language – that of an abstract visual poetry of books.
Marginalia is a personal interpretation of the books designed by Anja Lutz with and for the following artists: Kader Attia, Sonia Boyce, Angela Bulloch, Jeanne van Heeswijk, Christine Hill, Hannah Höch, Hella Jongerius, Loriot, J. Mayer H., Laercio Redondo, Julian Rosefeldt, Lawrence Weiner amongst many more.
Anja Lutz is a book designer for art books (www.anjalutz.com). She studied at Istituto Europeo di Design in Rome and at University of Arts in London. She was the initiator and art director of the international art and design project “shift!” (www.shift.de) and has co-founded The Green Box (www.thegreenbox.net) in 2006. She received the European Adobe Design Award, was Visiting Professor at the American University of Beirut, lecturer at Bauhaus Universität Weimer and Universität der Künste Berlin, and also Fellow at the Akademie Schloss Solitude and the Jan van Eyck Akademie. Her design has always been inspired by her passion for art. Anja Lutz lives in Berlin.
Within the framework of the exhibition Marginalia by Anja Lutz at Nosbaum Reding gallery.
Anja Lutz in conversation with Prof. Ilka Helmig, FH Aachen (Design department).
