Drawing from a background in psychology, Bristol UK based artist Alexander Korzer-Robinson focuses on the notion of the “inner landscape”. Using discarded materials, Korzer-Robinson makes objects as “an invitation to the viewer to engage her/his own inner life in order to assign meaning to the artwork.”
His cut book art is made by working through the books, page by page, cutting around some of the illustrations while removing others. The images seen in the finished work, are left standing in the place where they would appear in the complete book. As a final step the book is sealed around the cut, and can no longer be opened.
Of his work, Korzer -Robinson says: “As we remember the books from our own past, certain fragments remain with us while others fade away over time – phrases and passages, mental images we created, the way the stories made us feel and the thoughts they inspired. In our memory we create a new narrative out of those fragments, sometimes moving far away from the original content. This is, in fact, the same way we remember our life – an ever changing narrative formed out of fragments. This mostly subconscious process of value judgements and coincidence is what interests me as an artist and as a psychologist. Through the artistic work, these books, having been stripped of their utilitarian value by the passage of time, regain new purpose. They are no longer tools to learn about the world, but rather a means to gain insight about oneself.”
To see more of Alexander Korzer-Robinson’s work, visit AlexanderKorzerRobinson.co.uk.