John Frederick Walker

John Frederick Walker Torn Twisted Text (2023)

mixed media / altered book in artist’s frame 14 ¼  x 32 ½  x 2 ½  inches 

My solo exhibition “Torn Books and Lost Texts” at the TDF gallery at Five Points in Torrington, CT was reviewed by art critic Tracey O’Shaughnessy in her Oct. 10th review in the Waterbury Republican-American. She writes:

“Five Points Gallery is…exhibiting John Frederick Walker’s compelling mixed media works examining books and their place in society.

By physically altering them through cutting, burning, painting and scribbling over texts and images, Walker evokes a feeling of what banning books means: censorship, suppression of information and the crushing of human expression…Walker’s pieces, which rip, tear, twist and paint over books, hints at that loss of knowledge. It’s not just that books can be misplaced, buried, burned or lost, Walker suggests, but that the juicy bits could be ripped out, burned or painted over, and thereby ignored.

At a time when books are so violently fought over, Walker’s mixed media works – particularly as they are painted with blood red or charcoal black – suggest that the most controversial books are never really read, but instead torn assunder. Walker includes neither words, illustrations or pictures. His is the opposite of the illuminated manuscript. Instead, they embody the idea of a book that has functioned for a millennium as a near-universal means of encoding vast amounts of human culture.” 

The exhibition is on though November 9, 2024.