In the stillness of a library, Ann Arbor-based artist Math Monahan has found life and energy in his book installations, entitled Between. For the project, he set up two collections of books in circular forms and placed them in separate parts of the University of Michigan library. By installing the pieces at different points in the building, Monahan intended to create a connection and to form a collective whole between the two spaces.
Viewers are torn between seeing the books as literature or as works of art. The pages are woven together in sections, naturally held together as an intertwined structure without any fasteners. Monahan says “By allowing the tension of the circle arrangement to hold the object together, without adhesives or restraint, the pages slowly unbraid themselves over time giving the installation the opportunity to become books, again, in their original form.”
