Continuing through February 9, 2026
Artist’s books have been a broadly acknowledged art form since at least the mid-1970s, when they were championed by two then conjoined New York artist organizations, Franklin Furnace and Printed Matter. Franklin Furnace collected and archived them, while Printed Matter developed an affordable retail and distribution market. Over the ensuing half century, artist book practice came to be associated with recognizable and often predictable formal traits. Primary among these were their handmade rather than mass-produced nature.
Other now-familiar approaches include experimentation with both large and small scale and the use of unusual materials. Some book artists utilized accordion-format objects, while others deconstructed found conventional books, using their pages, bindings and covers to make sculptural objects.
The field has grown so that there is now a local advocacy organization, CODEX, that holds a biannual symposium. “Bookness” has been timed to take place during the CODEX book art fair in Oakland (February 7-10, Oakland Marriott City Center).
Given artists’ books’ long track record, it’s notable when any artist surprises us with something unfamiliar and striking. In “Bookness” the breakthrough piece is by Kota Ezawa, known for his video-based animations and lightbox still images. Ezawa’s “Paper Space” (2011) is a small work consisting of four pop-up book pages that share a central axis, resulting in an unusual x-shaped object. Each page is a three-dimensional recreation of a still from one of his animations based on historical events, such as the O.J. Simpson trial. Ezawa, known as a meticulous craftsman, invigorates “Paper Space” with precision paper cuts and understated, carefully chosen color, infusing the book with intellectual and emotional complexity.
When artists change the expected scale of an object, they intend to make us take a step back and pay close attention. Nasim Moghadam’s “Birth Certificate” (2019) is a nearly eight-foot tall, multi-page booklet that resembles a passport, with a snapshot of a woman wearing a headscarf, its pages covered in Farsi script. The effect suggests that an American-Iranian background has an outsized impact on one’s life because of the distancing effect that the language barrier imposes, especially when one’s severely delimited face is all that is recognizable to a stranger.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Mary V. Marsh and Tony Bellaver’s “Journeying” (2011) includes a tiny filing cabinet, just a few inches square, containing an accordion-folded 23-page book. The contents are a diaristic record of the couple’s life together. Its miniaturized inaccessibility mirrors the privacy of their intimacy.
Li Jiang refers to art history in “36 Views of the Golden Gate Bridge” (2023), an extension of Hokusai’s seminal series of prints, “36 Views of Mt. Fuji” (1830-32), as well as to a 1902 homage to Hokusai by Henri Rivière, “36 Views of the Eiffel Tower.” Jiang has invented a new type of etching technique to render her own contribution to this touching cross-cultural, three-century conversation among artists.
Gale Antokal’s “Inspirare” (2025) also engages with deep history, adding a highlight to the show with its unapologetic aesthetic grace. Repurposing twenty fragile five-hundred-year-old end papers she found in an old atlas, Antokal makes abstract marks using fugitive dust, chalk, flour and graphite, leaving ghost-like presences on the ancient, haunted paper.
Two other artists make accordion-style works that nod towards a second popular contemporary form, the graphic novel. The hand-embroidered narrative in Ivan Acebo-Choy’s “Untitled 01” recounts an onanistic episode filled with a feeling of sad isolation. Israel Campos’ “A Saturday Afternoon at Westlake Park (September 13, 2025)” has several black and white etchings depicting traditional European landscape architecture. The tranquility of these scenes is disrupted by a tiny pre-Columbian figure rendered in skin-toned gouache. Like Enrique Chagoya, Campos reminds us that a corrupt and violent colonial history lies behind the tranquility of the everyday world many of us are accustomed to.
We refer to art as “academic” when it feels as though the artist has been taught a strict set of rules to work with that lead to predictable results. As the field of artist’s books reaches the half-century mark as a contemporary art form, “Bookness” demonstrates that the book medium, despite some academic tendencies, continues to inspire innovation.
