Meriç Algün Ringborg "The Library of Unborrowed Books"
Art in General
This event has ended.
Art in General, in collaboration with The Center for Fiction, New York, presents Stockholm-based artist Meriç Algün Ringborg’s New Commissions project, The Library of Unborrowed Books.
The project, presenting hundreds of books that have never been borrowed from the Center for Fiction’s library, calls into question what subjects in any contemporary moment have ‘currency’ or desirability, and brings attention to topics and stories that have been temporarily overlooked but that could have their relevance restored in the future.
Following its first iteration in 2012 with the Stockholm Public Library in Sweden, where the project aroused great public and critical interest, for the presentation at Art in General, Meriç Algün Ringborg will make selections of books from the Center for Fiction, the only nonprofit in the U.S. solely dedicated to celebrating fiction. These books will then go on institutional loan to Art in General for the public to access for the first time in an environment that emulates the atmosphere of the Center, but that is experienced within the context of a contemporary art space.
Why these books aren’t ‘chosen,’ why they are overlooked, will never be clear but whatever each book contains, en masse they become representative of the gaps and cracks of history, or the cataloging of the world and the ambivalent relationship between absence and presence. In this library their existence is validated simply by being borrowed, underlining their being as well as their content and form by putting them on display in an autonomous library dedicated to the books yet to have been revealed.”
Meriç Algün Ringborg was born in 1983 in Istanbul, and currently lives and works in Stockholm. She studied at Sabancı University, Istanbul, from 2002–2007 and obtained a BA, Visual Arts and Communication Design, followed by an MA in Fine Arts from the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm (2010-2012). Selected recent and upcoming group exhibitions include: When Attitudes Became Form Become Attitudes, Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit (2013); Signs Taken in Wonder, MAK, Vienna (2013); Incremental Change, Galeri NON, Istanbul (2012); When Attitudes Became Form Become Attitudes, CCA Wattis Institute, San Francisco (2012); Show Off, Malmö Konsthall, Malmö (2012); An Incomplete History of Incomplete Works of Art, Francesca Minini, Milan (2012); Untitled (12th Istanbul Biennial), 2011 and Danföredanföredanföredan, Index – The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, Stockholm (2010). She had her first solo exhibition in Stockholm, 2010 titled The Concise Book of Visa Application Forms. Other solo presentations include A Hook or a Tail, Frutta Gallery, Rome (2013); Becoming European, Meessen De Clerq, Brussels (2012); Prompts and Triggers: Meriç Algün Ringborg, Line No.2 (Holy Bible), Witte de With, Rotterdam (2012). Currently she is a resident at IASPIS – The Swedish Arts Grants Committee’s International Programme for Visual Artists.
[Image: The Library of Unborrowed Books, Stockholm, 2012. Photo: Jean-Baptiste Béranger]
Media
Schedule
from January 26, 2013 to March 23, 2013
Opening Reception on 2013-01-26 from 18:00 to 20:00