Brian Dettmer

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Brian Dettmer (b. 1974) is an American contemporary artist. He is noted for his alteration of preexisting media -- such as old books, maps, record albums, and cassette tapes -- to create new, transformed works of visual fine art.

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[edit] Life and art

New International Dictionary, 2003. Altered book. 12 x 9 x 7 inches.
New International Dictionary, 2003. Altered book. 12 x 9 x 7 inches.
Mound 3, 2008. Altered book. 4.5 x 10 x 10.75 inches.
Mound 3, 2008. Altered book. 4.5 x 10 x 10.75 inches.

[edit] Life and Early Work

Brian Dettmer, born in 1974, was raised in Naperville, Illinois. Until 2006, Dettmer lived in and around Chicago, where he earned a BA in fine arts from Columbia College Chicago in 1997. During school and following graduation, Dettmer worked in positions related to graphics and signage design. In 2006, Dettmer moved to Atlanta, where he works as a studio artist. (Brown 2008; Camper 2005).

Dettmer's early art work incorporated codes and language, such as paintings based on braille, Morse Code, and American Sign Language. He then began to make work by repeatedly pasting newspapers and book pages to canvas and tearing off pieces, leaving behind layered fragments. (Brown 2008; Camper 2005). In 2000, Dettmer began to experiment by gluing and cutting into books. (Brown 2008).

[edit] Recent Work

Dettmer's current work involves the alteration of preexisting media to transform the physical form and/or to selectively remove and reveal content to create new works of fine art. Dettmer explains: “Old books, records, tapes, maps, and other media frequently fall into a realm that too much of today’s art occupies. Their intended role has decreased or deceased and they often exist simply as symbols of the ideas they represent rather than true conveyers of content. ... When an object's intended function is fleeting, the necessity for a new approach to its form and content arises.”[1],[2]

A large body of Dettmer's current work is created by altering books. Dettmer seals, then cuts into older dictionaries, encyclopedias, textbooks, science and engineering books, art books, medical guides, history books, atlases, comic books, wallpaper sample books, and others, exposing select images and text to create intricate three-dimensional derivative works that reveal new or alternative interpretations of the books. Dettmer never inserts or moves any of the books' contents. An early example of Dettmer's unique altered books is his 2003 work, New International Dictionary (pictured at right), which is an original 1947 unabridged dictionary sealed and carved by Dettmer to expose images within the dictionary (Sundell 2005, at pg. 70). In more recent work, Dettmer has augmented his artistic process by folding, bending, or rolling books before sealing and cutting them or, in some instances, sanding them. Dettmer's 2008 work, Mound 3 (pictured at right), is an example of a dictionary folded and sanded by Dettmer to resemble carved wood.

Other notable examples of media transformed by Dettmer include melted music cassette tapes formed into a life-sized human skeleton (Tyson 2007) and various animal skulls; carved and layered highway maps of the United States and the Middle East[3] and other map sculptures; funeral flower arrangements formed with unraveled VHS videotapes of gangster movies; and a controversial reconfiguration of the audio from George W. Bush's 2002 State of the Union Address.[4]

Brian Dettmer's work has been published and exhibited widely around the world [5] and is currently shown by a number of art galleries, including Kinz, Tillou + Feigen in New York, Packer Schopf Gallery in Chicago, Toomey Tourell in San Francisco, MiTO in Barcelona, Romo Gallery in Atlanta, and Edward Day Gallery in Toronto. (Brown 2008).

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