In addition, for this occasion, Peter Downsbrough conceived three new works in relation to the exhibition space. The exhibition provides a comprehensive overview of this impressive production of books, presenting them in eighteen large showcases with separate copies for browsing and thirty short films shown on monitors. Subsequently, he will expand this vocabulary with grids, diagonals, technical plans, cuttings, photographs, punctuation marks, geographical maps, sketches, altered postcards, and film stills, which he will endlessly combine in ever-changing configurations. The most frequently appearing formal tools are words -nouns such as altitude, place, line, structure, zone adjectives such as locative, horizontal, static, vertical verbs such as locate, post, reset adverbs such as here, now, up prepositions such as as, to-, and horizontal or vertical lines, and arrows. Generally, the haptic and compositional starting point of his books could come across as quite rigid, sparse, and distant, but looking at the entire group of publications, instead of at a single one, reveals a particular virtuosity and rich interaction with this basic media. Indeed, Peter Downsbrough refers to the book as a volume, a space within which to work. Consequently, one could even consider that he approaches the book as the ultimate exhibition space, one in which he continuously regroups reflections, images, associations, compositions, and proportions. From the beginning he accords the word, and also the book, an objectlike, spatial, if not sculptural, quality. Peter Downsbrough belongs to that first generation of artists -including colleagues such as Robert Barry, Sol LeWitt, and Lawrence Weiner in New York and John Baldessari, Ed Ruscha, and Allan Ruppersberg in California- who use the book as a means for presenting their work. For the first time in Barcelona, the exhibition THE BOOK(S) 1968-2013 offers an extensive overview of this impressive component of his oeuvre.

Since 1968, Peter Downsbrough (1940, New Brunswick, N.J., U.S.A., based in Brussels) has made one hundred and one books.

Moca museum barcelona