Jacob Kassay Dummy Wedge

a glass wedge is in a library book, presumably discarded, with a stamp from the buffalo and erie county public library on the top edge of the pages, bisected by the glass wedge. the book's title is barely legible, but the whole point of this post is that it might not matter so much. via printed matter/artsy
Jacob Kassay, No Title, 2013 — ongoing, glass, library book, from the Printed Matter Benefit Auction ending May 2, 2025 at Artsy

I guess I’ve never actually asked, but all this time I assumed that the books Jacob Kassay inserted his prisms into were all on an undisclosed reading list of some kind. An esoteric phenomenology syllabus, ex libris Alain Robbe Grillet, whatever, some kind of over-arching epistemology that may have been invisible on the scale of a lone volume, but that cohered in some way of the artist’s devising.

And that the glass prism was then crafted to fit precisely in a certain spot in the book—or at least in a certain volume—that, when you looked in, distorted and perhaps simultaneously revealed one piece of a larger informational puzzle.

a jacob kassay artwork consisting of a glass wedge fitted precisely in between the pages of a library book, this one in french, with a cream cover and a red border, oh fine, it's a collection of poemes by constantin cavafis published by gallimard, and there's a library bar code sticker on the cover, in the lower left corner. from the portfolio page of ross art studio dot com
Jacob Kassay, coin de verre & livre de bibliothèque, via Ross Art Studio

And now I wonder if I have it exactly backwards, and it’s the wedges that are the drivers. Kassay has donated a glass & library book sculpture to the upcoming Printed Matter benefit auction [less than four days left to bid!], and the winning bidder will receive, “a dummy book and wooden dummy wedge to be used only to procure the correct format of library book.” So maybe there are instructions of genre or title, but it sounds like the determining factor is “correct format”? Which you test with a dummy wedge and dummy book?

Indeed, it’s right there, in the artist packet from Galerie Art Concept in Paris, which characterizes the wedges as glass sculptures, and the books as support:

“The positions of the glass wedges inside the library books are necessarily temporary. The wedges don’t belong to any particular book but rather shift from book to book like a hermit crab, finding the other book that precisely fits it. This is why I chose to house them in library books – as a kind of format logic which focuses on their qualities as objects, rather than as texts with specific content.”

And now the image of distorted texts is replaced by roaming wedges, ever in search of a new book—or at least ready to trade up if the fit is right.

the sun hits the white veined marble panels sandwiched between an undulating grid of light grey granite beams, beveled to a wedge profile that rises to each joint, on the facade of the beinecke rare book library at yale, designed in 1963 by gordon bunshaft and photographed by lauren manning of vermont danby marble dot com
the white veined marble and light grey granite façade of Gordon Bunshaft’s Beinecke Library, 1963, image: Lauren Manning via Vermont Danby Marble

Also, I found this comment from Kassay’s glass fabricator, that the wedges are “inspired by the façade of the Beinecke Library at Yale.” which, I assume is a reference, not to the translucent marble, but to the beveled granite lattice that holds it. Maybe I should just ask.