Book Cell

is an octagonal building made entirely from books that was installed in the Modern Art Center in Lisboa.

Slovakian artist Matej Kren built an octagonal framework, filled it with books and removed it, leaving a symmetrical, enclosed room of stacked literature.

The books used for the piece were borrowed from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation onsite at the Modern Art Center and returned to its collection after use, making it a very site-specific, almost personal piece, and reinforcing the idea that you don’t have to use something crazy, new and disposable to make powerful art.

Scanner

Kren created “Scanner” specifically for MAMbo in collaboration with the Slovakian Centre for Information on Literature.

The installation is the seminal event of a local children’s book fair.

Some of us may have been raised to treat books like books and only books, but Kren manages to inspire literary reverence by using books as building materials.

However intellectually metaphorical that may sound, it’s a physical truth.

A look inside the dazzling illuminated interior of Kren’s “Scanner” installation.

Mirrors and multi-colored lights are used to confuse perspective within the book-built structure.

Since the public can easily see themselves reflected in a false infinite – thus discovering the illusion – the problem becomes the latency of perception.

Mirrors become an instrument to create illusion and, at the same time, to unmask it.

Oh, and he made a Tower Book too :

By Matej Kren