Asha Ganpat

Hunting the Binary Forest

carved board book 5.875" x 11.75"

Carvings of Animals and Other Things

This series began in the fall of 2015. In preparation for a book art exhibition, I sought to find something else. After nearly twenty years of creating handmade art book objects, I wanted to return to the drawing board and look at the book object anew. In an effort to shed my expectations, I poured through children's picture books. Really. I went to a bookstore and practically picked up every one. After several hours, I had fallen in love with board books. They are sturdy and slick, printed with vibrant imagery. Each page, a raw canvas awaiting my interference.

My work is with a knife. I cut into the skin of the page. My process is an act of removal. I expose the white and pulpy flesh of the thick cardboard page, yet it is not an action of obfuscation. The textured white forms which I superimpose and peel away are manipulations of the preprinted illusory spaces. Using only the blade, I flay the image to uncover the meat of the cardboard, dull against the glossy top layer. The removed shapes fill negative spaces, add absence, reveal new depths; the patterns flow over, through, beneath, inside, between, and behind. When the composition is realized, most of the surface has been pulled away, the altered image completely transformed.

In my altering of the content, I entrap the innocuous and pleasant subjects into a distorted world where disaster and danger loom. With my forms, I add glorious halos, drips and poolings, warps and vortexes, beaming radiance, and abysses. I enclose and imperil the figures, giving them new desperate adventures to play out, each piece a new fantastic narrative. As the wielder of the blade, It is fun to play tormentor and benevolent force whom teases at the stories of these imaginary worlds. Each page is a fresh beginning to play with subject, composition, depth, and pattern.