Reading Revolutionaries

Reading Revolutionaries proposes an alternative reading of John Sparagana's work in the form of a literal understanding of visual information as text. Crowds & Powder: The Revolutionaries, a large-scale work of art, is translated into the format of a mass-market paperback book. Arranged over eighty double-page spreads, each individual page frames a full-scale fragment of this work. This small volume perpetuates Sparagana s manipulation of printed media and contributes to the ongoing study of the relationship between media and the arts. Not only does it allude to a growing discourse on the control and manipulation of visual narrative, as increasingly witnessed from political imagery to popular culture, but it also investigates the way we read and process (visual) language

John Sparagana is an artist and the Grace Christian Vietti Chair in the Visual Arts and Chair of the Department of Visual and Dramatic Arts at Rice University. Recent exhibitions include Without You I Am Nothing, (curated by Arturo Herrera), Heldart, Berlin, Albert Oehlen, John Sparagana, Studiolo, Zürich, Switzerland, El Cuerpo Sutil, with Miguel Angel Rojas, Sicardi Gallery, Houston, and a solo exhibition, Crowds & Powder, Corbett vs Dempsey, Chicago. Sparagana is co-author, with Mieke Bal, of Sleeping Beauty: A One Artist Dictionary (University of Chicago Press). Reto Geiser is an architect and scholar of modern architecture with a focus on the intersections between architecture, pedagogy, and media. He is currently the Gus Wortham Assistant Professor at the Rice University School of Architecture. A founding principal of the collaborative design practice MG&Co., Reto is developing spatial strategies in a range of scales from the book to the house, exploring the boundaries of design and research. Current research includes the project Print and Screen an investigation of the shift from print and post-print production and new forms of publishing in the information age.