Rolled Books Sculptures and Installations by Jonathan Callan Explore the Connection Between Materiality and Language

Artist Jonathan Callan subverts the organization of a neatly arranged bookcase through sculptural works and site-specific installations that obscure and contort volumes into coiled masses. Whether packed tightly into an architectural cavern or hung on a wall, Callan’s pieces focus on how materiality intersects with language and the relationship between text and texture.

Raised in the robust literary culture of the U.K., the artist has always found meaning and value in books, his preferred tool for learning and considering life’s more abstract, philosophical questions. As he works with the objects today, many of which he sources from secondhand shops or online retailers, he ties together the contents and physical qualities. “All sorts of things might draw me to particular books, the images, the writing, the author, the subject, the book cover, the kind of paper, the font, the design, the list is almost endless,” he shares, noting that he doesn’t regard his practice as centering on interpretation. He explains:

To say that my work is not illustrative of the text is not to say that the meaning of the text is ignored. I find an illustrative approach far too simplistic. Humans cannot live without meaning. We have an extremely wide-ranging approach to its creation and understanding. We use myth, intuition, allusion, context, and metaphor. In that sense, I regard all aspects of the information contained within books with equal seriousness.

This connection manifests throughout Callan’s broad body of work in myriad ways. In the towering “Boulder,” for example, the artist bends hundreds of volumes into curved forms that nestle tightly together, creating a sort of freestanding library. “When I first began these kinds of works, I was thinking a lot about painting and how books might be used to indicate brush strokes,” he says. Constructed with screws, the piece masks any visible writing in favor of the dyed edges and texture of the compressed pages.

Other works more directly reference a book’s contents, including “The problems and the development of modern philosophy around facial expression.” An amorphous shape rippled with gray, white, and beige, the sculpture weaves together three books on facial expression, the development of philosophy, and the problems of philosophy to highlight “the absurdities and contradictions of life (that) are present in both.”

Delve into Callan’s largely literary practice on his site and Instagram