Painted Books

Big paintings of  trompe-l'œil book shelves filled with trompe-l'œil books and punctuated with trompe-l'œil tchotchkes. Oil on linen by Sean Landers (b. 1962) from his recent show at Galerie Rodolphe Janssen in Brussels.

To me, it seems a little perverse to display these crowded canvases against the stark walls of a conventional Minimalist gallery space – when their subject reflects the antithesis of Minimalism – i.e., the dense and dusty walls of shelving in the library where I work, as well as the dense and dusty walls of shelving in most of the houses of my friends and relatives.

Not my own house, however, which is almost as bare as Galerie Rodolphe Janssen itself. For me (a librarian) to have a home collection of books would be like a dentist with a home collection of teeth.