Chantel Foretich

As a visual artist, sculptor and engineer of sorts, I have long believed the written word is the highest art form. The shrunken, mechanized and illuminated constructions I make often begin with a place described in a novel, a scene of respite or violence, memorable for the way in which it envelops the reader. I am particularly drawn to fiction and biographies written in the United States and abroad between the 1930s and 1960s, and the visuals these works evoke. I most identify with the word “hack” in relation to reconstructing information systems – books themselves – into visuals – and attempting to understand novelists’ and biographers’ ideas. I believe that my sculptures are a route, however roughly interpreted, to the writers’ scenes and/or the writers’ ideas about writers.