Swann’s Way
2022
Swann’s Way 2022
The construction of a book in signatures results in a linear narrative, describing a passage of time. Proust believed that time was not necessarily a linear clock of fixed and unchangeable moments but a concurrent experience of past and future to construct a present.
In Wren’s latest project she deconstructs a 1950 copy of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, breaking the tome into its original signatures and transcribing the leaflets onto 18 X 24” Japanese Mulberry paper. These leaflets are separated and pinned to the gallery wall as is written, page 3 and 34 on the same folded page, making it impossible for the viewer to read and follow the story as it was initially written. The sequence is interrupted and the thoughts become disjointed fragments of Proust’s thinking. A mere thought, then another, then another. Although the narrative is complete within the book as a whole, this work presents the gaps and the interstitial space between the stories.
