Artist Robert The creates sculptural works in which books are transformed with subversive wit and scrupulous invention. Often working with remaindered volumes that were part of large-scale mass-market editions, the artist transfigures these objects through singular gestures such as through-slicing words and cutting out new iconic forms. Always uniquely appropriate to his source material, the artist’s interventions have included turning a bible into a grenade and a Malevich monograph into a Kalashnikov.

For History of Art, 2017, The modifies a copy of H.W. Janson’s ubiquitous art history doorstopper by slicing ‘bristles’ into its leaved edge and affixing a broom handle to its spine. This remarkable sculptural hybrid could be designed for sweeping away the remnants of a dated art history—or reminding us of the alternate histories swept under the carpet by Janson’s grand narrative.

With The Illustrated Story of “O”, 2005, the artist highlights the violence at the core of the notorious “erotic” novel, cutting a nested handgun through the book. As with all his work, The’s disruptive gesture manages to hold the original book and its new form in an urgent, engaging open conversation with one another.

In Philosophical Investigations, 2017, the artist cuts the word THIS all the way through a copy of Wittgenstein’s opus, suggesting both an analog for indexical meaning, as well as a counter to linguistic relativity through a gesture toward presentness.

While the precision of Robert The’s work suggests the use of die or laser-cut processes, the works are in fact all directly cut by the artist. Playfully referring to his work as “precision vandalism”, The prefers to avoid marks of the hand-crafted and high-end: his book works instead foreground the laser-like sharpness of their creator’s inventiveness.

View the exhibition online here>.