Jared Stanley and Matthew Hebert: 'La Jolla Reading Room'

On view: Jan. 15-Mar. 12, 2022

Opening reception: Friday, Jan. 14, 2022 from 6:30-8:30 p.m.
Artist walkthrough: Saturday, Jan. 29. 2022 at 11 a.m.
Gallery hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

About the exhibition:
Writer Jared Stanley and artist Matthew Hebert collaborate on the interactive sound installation La Jolla Reading Room. Composed of sculptures and sound recordings, the exhibition draws inspiration from the Athenaeum’s collection of over 2,000 artists’ books, as well as the tradition of library reading rooms, places set aside for silent reading and contemplation. The sculptures resemble a set of reading tables arranged in a maze-like pattern within the gallery, and recordings are composed of the voices of writers, artists, and book enthusiasts within the larger San Diego and La Jolla community—a collaged chorus of readers, thinking aloud about the experience of reading and interacting with artists’ books.

Stanley and Hebert invited community members to visit the Athenaeum and spend about 45 minutes engaging with selected books in the library’s collection, after which they recorded brief interviews about their experience. Selections from the interviews are included in the installation, blended with the voices of others in the community to create a constantly shifting chorus.

“Our fond wish is to have visitors enter a space which seems static, quiet and formal, but which upon entry becomes full of sound, a cacophony of voices filling the air with sounds, ideas, emotions, and tones, creating a loud library, a place where book bound language could be returned to the status of voices, revivifying tones, timbres, accents, and emotions.” –Jared Stanley

Major support for this exhibition provided by the University of Nevada, Reno.

About the artists:
Jared Stanley is the author of three full-length collections of poetry, EARS (Nightboat Books, 2017), The Weeds, (Salt Publishing 2012) and Book Made of Forest (Salt Publishing, 2009), which won the Crashaw Prize for Poetry. His poetry and prose have appeared in many journals including Harvard Review, Triple Canopy, The Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-day and in the anthology Counter-Desecration: A Glossary for the Anthropocene (Wesleyan, 2018). His awards include a Silver Pen Award from the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame and fellowships from the Nevada Arts Council and the Center for Art + Environment. Born in Arizona, Stanley grew up in northern California and now lives in northern Nevada, where he is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Nevada, Reno

Matthew Hebert has been working under the studio name eleet warez since completing his undergraduate studies in the mid-90, a name borrowed from hacker culture suggesting the technical sophistication, improvisational spirit, and freewheeling appropriation that is essential to his work. Hebert creates work that deals with technology and its effects on the domestic environment and our sense of space and place, taking recognizable forms and layering new use and meaning onto them. He has exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Berkeley Art Museum, Milwaukee Art Museum, Museum of Craft and Folk Art, San Francisco; California Center for the Arts, Escondido; Chicago Cultural Center, and Core77 in New York. He received his BA in Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley; and his MFA from California College of the Arts. Hebert has taught at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, CalArts, and School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and is currently Associate Professor of Art at San Diego State University.

Related links:
The Athenaeum Music & Arts Library on Instagram
The Athenaeum on Facebook