Fill ‘er up at Job Koelewijn’s ‘Sanctuary’

Dutch conceptual artist Job Koelewijn’s new work Sanctuary includes this life-size gas station made entirely from the covers of books.

Is it a telling omen that in the future both gas stations and books will be extinct? A homage to the divergent sacredness of books and gasoline. Books and gasoline, two essential elements of Western Civilization, joined to form a sort of surreal 22nd century filling station where one can go and pump the world’s creative output into their vehicle of choice, whether it be a computer, e-reader, i-pod or quite possibly by then directly into our own bodies!

In 2005 Koelewijn produced another major book work. He created a bookshelf in the form of a lemniscate, or figure 8, symbolizing the infinite nature of knowledge and the infinite power of books.

Untitled (lemniscaat)

From the introduction to the 2006 exhibition Continuing Performances at Galerie Fons Welters.

“In the beginning was the word, the written word is unto eternity. A bookcase in the form of a lemniscate (the mathematical sign for infinity), full of books, words, shows the cycle of art. The way in which artworks endure, sometimes concealed, sometimes at eye level, close enough to touch, then forgotten for years, pushed away behind other books. The eternal performance of art. The public constantly changes in age and era. The words remain the same, and yet what is read changes from one age to the next.”