The Librarians

The Librarians show at Queens College Art Center
Paper, Toner // 2013
In collaboration with The Notion Collective
This piece is one in a series of four Untitled works created with The Notion Collective for the Queens College Art Center’s The Librarians show.

Untitled (CMYK) is a mural composed of 240 letter-size sheets of paper that shows the gradual progression of a laser printer being drained of toner. Text on the sheets, rendered as negative space amid alternating lines of pure cyan, magenta, yellow, and black toner, displays a read-out of the most frequently requested items from the Queens College library, starting with the most-requested item on the top left. On each successive page, the font-size of the text is decreased, which in turn gradually increases the number of lines per page.

A reaction to the traditional material of the library — ink on paper — Untitled (CMYK) calls attention to the changing role that libraries play in today’s increasingly digital world; as the mural stretches across the wall, a very literal disappearance of ink is evident. In libraries, as everywhere else, a transition of color-spaces is taking place, from the CMYK space occupied by printed material to the RGB space of electronic screens. This transition, apparent enough in our everyday lives, is highlighted by the unexpected ‘most-requested item’ that begins the mural: “LAPTOP CHARGER.”