Eva Barto's Gamble
<p>Opened to almost any page, Eva Barto’s first publication, <em>All in: An Anthology of Gambling</em> reads as an accumulation of competing visual and textual registers. First, occupying the majority of each page, are enlarged reproductions of sixty-five texts concisely excerpted for this compendium and selected for their relevance to the notions of loss, profit, and play. Second, and indiscriminately obstinate in its placement, is the title of each excerpted book or essay placarded at the top of its respective page. This and the occasional inclusion of a bill from a publisher detailing the reproduction fee, often overlap with the facsimile enough to disturb the text’s conditions of legibility. In the upper and lower right hand corners, values replacing the conventional designation of the page number indicate, on the one hand, the book’s production budget, and on the other, the artist’s gains and losses. These numbers fluctuate as the pages go on, while the book’s final form is caught in the crossfire of an equation determined on the basis of risk. Gambling forms the pretext for this investigation of value and quality premised on the relative availability of funding…</p>
Authors: Rachel Valinsky
Artists: Eva Barto
Part of: TextWork
ISSN: 27269949