"The Messengers" tunnel book with attached covers and a magnetic closure by Barbara Brown. On view in "Beyond Words" at WSG Gallery through Oct. 25, 2009.

courtesy of the artist

This year’s “Beyond Words: A Celebration of Book Arts” at the WSG Gallery is the fourth installment of this sophisticated art form wrestling with the definition of book and art.

“Artists’ books are not as we in the western tradition might think,” says WSG gallery member and exhibit curator Barbara Brown. “Rather, an artist’s book is intended from conception to be an art piece and might bear little resemblance to the books with which we are familiar.”

Brown’s observation goes a long way in explaining the rich diversity found in this exhibit. Because based on the evidence at hand, it’s often difficult to determine where the book takes up from the art — or vice versa.

Even an expanded definition of “book” hardly describes some of the art in “Beyond Words.” There are books hanging from the ceiling; books that look like trinkets; and even a few books that look like books.

There’s a heightened aesthetic among the 15 artists' work on display that makes each “book” more readily identifiable as an artwork than anything else. But even among these artful explorers, there are outliers who not only question the nature of the book; they're also questioning the appearance of sign and language within the context of the book form. And it is precisely here that this year’s edition of “Beyond Words” excels.

Ben Reynaert's diminutive “Falling 2009” straddles the boundaries of book art by being a Coptic binding with found pages. His tiny hand-stitched book looks everything like a “book,” but its individual pages are more artistic composition than the pages of a traditional volume.

By contrast, Susan Skarsgard’s “26 of 26” giclee prints (making a first appearance since last May at Washtenaw Community College’s GalleryOne) question the notion of sign and symbol embedded within book form; although it might be more accurate to say Skarsgard’s issue isn’t so much a matter of book form itself as much as the alphabet’s typography.

Working in a similar vein, but challenging the notion of the folio itself, is Ruth Bardenstein’s “Vibration/Dickenson” and “Geometry/Galileo.” Both of these “books” consists of four Mylar digital print scrolls inscribed in a hermetic alphabet. Hanging from the WSG ceiling, these handsome scrolls look like hieroglyphic-laden artifacts from an unknown civilization.

The display’s masterwork takes on this expanded notion of book as art through the use of typography as well as shadow and light. A joint effort of Reynaert and Brown (with video supplied by Howard White), “Tangled Words” effortlessly sums up the exhibit’s ambition.

This gallery installation features 30-odd strands of digital ink on vellum hung from the WSG ceiling with video projected upon them as they slowly turn. The shadows thrown by the light on a nearby wall makes these tangled “words” a never-ending tapestry of shifting image and form. And, ultimately, this is what a book is — right?

“Beyond Words: A Celebration of Book Arts” will continue through Oct. 25 at WSG Gallery, 306 S. Main St. Gallery hours are noon-6 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday; noon-10 p.m. Friday-Saturday; and noon-5 p.m. Sunday. For information, call 734-761-2287.

John Carlos Cantú is a free-lance writer who covers art for AnnArbor.com.