42 Artists’ books Exhibition
selections from the Bob Calle Prize

Exhibition extended until November 27, 2022
It may contain words but it is not literature. It may contain images but it is not a catalogue. It joins reading and looking. Often done in multiples but at times existing as one unique example, it is made up of a thousand pages or contains just one sheet of paper. It can be everything and the opposite of everything, slipping the bonds of any and all definition… The artist’s book is that fully fledged work of art that is designed by artists to assume the shape of a book. A crucible of multiple visual and poetic languages, it concentrates an artist’s thinking, which is rendered accessible, can be gone over, paged through, shown to others, and circulated democratically beyond venues dedicated to art.

To highlight the rich diversity and fundamental freedom of the artist’s book, a major European award was created by Laurence Dumaine Calle to honor the great art collector Bob Calle (1920-2015), the founder and first director of Nîmes’s Carré d’Art following a career in medicine at the Institut Curie in Paris. Bob Calle was also a close friend of the major artists of his generation.

The Bob Calle Prize is awarded every two years; the first was given in 2017. The winner is chosen by a jury made up of artists, critics, gallery owners, collectors, and curators. These have included such figures as Jean-Michel Alberola, Alexandra Baudelot, Bernard Blistène, Christian Boltanski (†), Jean de Loisy, Anne Moeglin-Delcroix, and Bertrand Schefer. The prize singles out a piece by an artist who has chosen the medium of the artist’s book.

It is the stunning results of these enlightened prize selections that the Jan Michalski Foundation is pleased to present to the public in an exhibition featuring 42 artists’ books, a selection that includes both winners of and works shortlisted for the 2017, 2019, and 2021 Bob Calle Prize. These artists’ books represent fertile areas of experimentation where the book, invested with the force of the plastic arts, and freed of its conventional functions, renews its potential for invention and visual beauty.