Batia Suter, Radial Grammar, 2018

Radial Grammar was created by Batia Suter in 2018 on the occasion of her eponymous exhibition at Le Bal in Paris, from May 25 till August 26, 2018. The imagery in this book, which revolves around radial shapes and concepts, also forms the basis of a video work in the exhibition. Specific for the book is the use of two separate layers of black ink, allowing Suter to create double images and to merge patterns and screens. Departing from pages scanned from her collection of second hand tomes—mainly concerning natural science, precision machinery and art history—Suter freely manipulates them and reorders them within the space of a book, which can be seen as a condensed exhibition on paper. The result is a journey along visual phenomena that reconnects us with the endless curiosity and patience of our younger selves leafing through an encyclopaedia, unattended and unable to read, yet all the more sensitive to its inner visual rhymes and correspondences.