Justin Lieberman: Hopi Basket Weaving (Zach Feuer Gallery, 2006)

116 pages
10 x 7 in 
Softcover
ISBN-10: 0976853361

"Hopi Basket Weaving is written and illustrated over the pages of an old book of the same title, pasted up with drawings, paintings and text about Lieberman’s recent exhibitions and projects. The result is something between a catalogue raisonné and an artist’s book, full of carefully casual juxtapositions and a few remaining basket weavers peeking out from behind the collages. Lieberman quotes Pat Robertson, Dennis Cooper and Susan Sontag; handwrites (in aquatint) a resume listing such gems as, 'fired for urinating in the food;' and riffs, with sly humor, on advertising. He burns a copy of Jonathan Safran Foer’s bestseller Everything is Illuminated and zips its ashes into a sandwich bag above the slogan 'Everything is Illuminated / Everything is Eliminated / Everything is Laminated.' More seriously and with colossal effectiveness, he posits that, 'What happens in Africa stays in Africa.' Painstakingly designed by Lieberman, this is the first publication of his work."