Larry Mitnick Architect (1 results)

Soft cover. Condition: Near Fine. Condition: NEAR FINE. Inscribed and signed by Ken Fifer and Larry Mitnick on the title page. Ink from the signatures marked the opposite cover. Light shelfware. All pages clean and unmarked. Softcover, 35 pages. InterArts Press, 2nd printing, 2012. Synopsis: The book begins with an introductory essay by Ken Fifer and Larry Mitnick describing their design intent. It is followed by a series of twelve short one page poems each accompanied by collage illustrations involving an ongoing dialogue between the poet Fifer and the architect Mitnick. Fifer is a writer who is interested in visual images, while Mitnick is a visual artist who is interested in words. The movement back and forth between these two different mediums creates a dynamic process of reflection, discourse, and in the end, a working method. The book also contains an essay by Barbara Crooker entitled "Between the Minuscule and the Nil". As discussed in the book s introduction, Mitnick s collages are not foremost meant to illustrate Fifer s poems but to locate their architectural conditions. Fifer s poems likewise do not seek to describe or illustrate Larry s collages but to locate and share their spatial relationships. Fifer and Mitnick s collaborations, large and small, began when the two men met as children growing up in the same Bronx, N.Y., housing project and have continued through the present. The work is the product of their re-connection through time and art. The work is an example of ekphrasis. One of the earliest examples of ekphrasis may be found in Book 18 of Homer's Illiad which contains a detailed textual description of Achille's shield. In this case, however, Ken Fifer's poems came first and Larry Mitnick responded to them with the collages. These compositions contain elements of Cubism and Constructivism where color and figure/ground stand negative space are important concerns. The Freyberger Gallery at Penn State Berks held an exhibition entitled "Architectural Conditions" from March 7 to April 7, 2012. Inscribed by Author(s).