The Book Remembers Everything: The Work of Erica Van Horn

In the work of Erica Van Horn, books collect, absorb, make use of, and transform remnants, remembrances, reminders, and remainders. From fragments and pieces, what is left behind and what might otherwise be forgotten, Van Horn makes meaning in beautiful and unexpected ways. Her work insists that the book is to be valued as a record and document — of an event, a landscape, a thought process, a creative vision, a fantasy or obsession, or the most quotidian practices and activities — even if it revises or re-imagines that which it records. Lively and engaging, Van Horn’s work is full of humor, even as it struggles to understand the varied and shifting relationship between images and text, and the ways we use both to make sense of the world and our experience. The books in this exhibition remember everything — they discover, explore, and sometimes enact their specific content, but each also tells the story of its making, its reason for being, and its creator’s process. [ca. 75 items]