Decorative Sunday

Los Angeles artist Matthew Monahan (b. 1972) was invited by the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing to produce an artists book (five other LA artists were also invited to make artists books) as part of The Los Angeles Project in 2014. Today we show a few pages plus the covers to Monahan's artists book Square Garden, published by the Ullens Center in Beijing and Koenig Books in London in 2014.

The book reproduces a series of 30 six-foot drawings which seem to continuously resurface, as if the reader is navigating through an unfurling labyrinth where images rise and fall like the monuments of a fictional empire. Made from carbon paper folded into rice paper to create a series of overlapping Rorschach diagrams, the simple drawings of figures, building materials and decorative motifs come to resemble architectural plans, disaster diagrams, exercise manuals and war games. A kaleidoscopic experience, Square Garden was inspired by the artist’s 2002-2003 experience of Chinese traditional architecture and garden design, as well as the contemporary urban landscape.