Wendy Heldmann lives and works in Los Angeles, a city where many exist in a constant state of earthquake awareness. She has created two striking series of works, of course and never and barricades + libraries, that take the orderly world of the library and turn it upside down.
Heldmann’s post-disaster world is void of humanity. The books are rearranged naturally, landing and resting wherever the last tremor or collapse leave them.
A striking reminder of the underlying fragility of even the best designed and built structures when up against the forces of nature.
Library aisles appear in Heldmann’s paintings as they are never seen. Tomes slump in their shelves, books lie in unintelligible piles on the floor, and periodicals are strewn across aisles, defying the organizing principles that make their contents accessible…Whether alluding to the obsolescence of tactile information systems such as libraries, allegorizing the innavigable results of an obtuse google search, or simply documenting the varying degrees of disarray left after a thorough ransacking, “Of Course and Never” oscillates between affirmation and negation of each perspective.
Whichever way you choose to look at it, it’s hard not to want to volunteer to help clean up!
Wendy Helmann’s website
Prints of Helmann’s piece Darkness Moves are available at 20×200
Addenda: Life Imitates Art
Not long after I started working on this story news came of an incident at Indiana State University’s Cunningham Memorial Library.
Though caused by human error I couldn’t resist. Luckily, no one was hurt.
Story and more photos here