Unfold This Moment

de Martin Herbert

Unfold This Moment explores the work of Carol Bove, one of the most inventive and protean artists of her generation, whose practice has expanded--via numerous stylistic evolutions over two decades--from ethereal drawings of Playboy models to towering crushed-metal sculptures. Considering both her art and her life, this book offers a linear history of a figure who doesn't believe in linear time--her work evokes multiple temporalities simultaneously--and who harbors covertly radical ambitions for what art might do to the viewer's mind and body--not least how, without slipping into esotericism, it might serve as a gateway to meditative states. The text refocuses Bove's artistic output into a prism for wider questions of artistic conduct and inspiration: reacting resourcefully to unhelpful frameworks of reception; maintaining curiosity while performing the increasingly professionalized role of being a successful artist; realizing the value of instinct and the unconscious in creativity; being open to magical coincidences; and acknowledging the overlap between the intellectual territory of contemporary art and some of the oldest spiritual philosophies.