Miles O’Shea and Olivier Deprez
September 10, 2012-January 20, 2013
BlackBookBlack results from a meeting between two artists who share a love for the films of Buster Keaton, books by Samuel Beckett, and a certain flair for the absurd. This collaborative project is dedicated to engraving and the book.
BlackBookBlack has two components, a performance art piece, and the book that is created in that performance. For the performance, Miles O’Shea and Olivier Deprez visit a library, set up print making materials, and produce woodcuts inspired by the site. This portfolio is an example of type of prints that result from such a performance.
The woodcut print, a simple form of expression, is the perfect medium for the stark, black images pulled from these artists’ rich imaginations.
Miles O’Shea is an actor and writer. After living many years in Berlin, he moved to Brussels, where he has performed in a series of theatrical creations such as The Welcoming Of Ishmael Stamp, a play written by Pieter de Buysser. He starred in the play The Gallery Attendants in 2006 where he met Olivier Deprez, which resulted in their artistic collaboration on projects like BlackBookBlack.
Olivier Deprez, born in 1966 in Binche, Belgium, is a writer, theorist, painter, printmaker, and a founding member of the collective Fremok FRMK (http://www.fremok.org/). He has taught at several colleges and universities and is an avid reader of Proust, Joyce and Dante. He also creates works inspired by the poetry of the American poet A.R. Ammons. Deprez is also a noted printmaker, whose adaptation in 2002 of Franz Kafka’s The Castle (Le Château d’apres Franz Kafka) is skillfully presented in 222 woodcuts and is a highly praised example of the Franco-Belgium style of bande dessiné (comics).