Book Description

Tiré du site Internet de Rite Editions: "Paul Sietsema's work in film and painting addresses the objects and systems of cultural production, tracing the circuits of proliferation and consumption that allow these objects to be taken up into history. The artist's book, At the hour of tea, has been constructed from a collection of stills from his most recent 16mm film of the same title. A filmic space is developed within the pages of the book moving through and layering the film's imagery via a system of cut portals and transparent screen-like pages. The film presents a sequence of tableaux of objects common to the desktop or study. Sietsema employs a language of clichéd "collectible" objects - Roman glass, coins, minor antiquities, and the like - to invoke the idea of a salon or space of contemplation as a parallel to the contemporary studio, and the idea of a kind of leisure-based consumptive creativity more and more shared by present day producers and consumers of culture. Drawing on the design idea of skeuomorphism common in modern computer interfaces, Sietsema fills his tableaux with now-outmoded items that still live on as mere icons of their former functions."