Ellington

Human beings were never born to read. That is the central claim at the heart of Proust and the Squid, the forthcoming book by Maryanne Wolf, director of the Center for Reading and Language Research and professor of child development at Tufts University.

According to a review in Discover magazine ("Why the Brain Learned to Read," September 2007), the ability to comprehend written language is not hard-wired into the brain but is rather a social construct that evolved over thousands of years as a way of preserving and transmitting vital information and ideas. Eventually, as these coding systems evolve further, reading as we now know it may be rendered obsolete.

Offering a glimpse of what such a world might be like is Shu: Reinventing Books in Contemporary Chinese Art, a new exhibit at the Seattle Asian Art Museum.

Although largely comprised of books in various combinations, altered forms and states of disrepair, the written word is not meant to be taken literally — or even read, for that matter (good news for those who can't read Chinese).

Instead, the viewer is invited to soak up the messages contained within via a sort of visual osmosis. Perhaps the best illustration of this effect is Wei Guanquing's "Yellow Covered Book Series," in which three-dimensional images of Adam and Eve, a crucifix and a car bulge out from pages covered in numbers, letters and other symbols. This particular piece seems to play off of Da Vinci Code-style intrigue and hint at the esoteric and mystical qualities that are imbued within the written word.

At times, the written word can seem simultaneously ineffable and indestructible. Xu Bing's "Silkworm Book II" is an electronic simulation of the artist's original performance piece in which silkworm moths lay eggs on the page of a book. The eggs then hatch, larvae spilling across the page, marring the original patterns. On the contrary, Wang Jin's "New Ancient-Stele of Zhang Qian" is an oversized book made of durable PVC that would take great effort to corrupt.

The artists' conflicted attitudes toward the written word are explained by their experiences growing up during China's Cultural Revolution, a time when ideological propaganda was the norm and Mao Zedong's Little Red Book could've given the Harry Potter series some stiff competition, albeit with a readership held largely at gunpoint.

Both a celebration and critique of the written word, Shu: Reinventing Books in Contemporary Chinese Art gives even the least well-adapted minds some food for thought.

Closing Soon:

What's in a name? Quite a bit, if Chad Wentzel and a Star-Studded Celebration of Infinitude and Perpetual Beauty is any indication. On display at the Crawl Space Gallery on Capitol Hill, Wentzel's exhibit features 13 tediously strung and intricately named works, formed from scraps of wood and countless mundane memories, such as "In Miami, We Stole a Bottle of Rum From the Rum Display and Drank It in the Bar."

Wentzel, who graduated from the UW in 2004 with degrees in printmaking and interdisciplinary visual arts, uses numerous God's-eyes as the cruces of each piece. These spider-web-like formations, which Wentzel learned how to make as a Cub Scout, not only connect the joints of each work but helped the artist capture long-forgotten moments of his life.

"The titles were random but based upon real things that happened in my life," Wentzel said. "I was trying to get at a general idea of memory."

Half the fun of perusing Wentzel's exhibit is reading the names/memories that he attached to them while weaving the God's-eyes.

"In the Hotel After My Sister's Graduation My Mom Found a Dead Mouse in Her Room. She Called the Front Desk and Asked What They Were Going To Do About It. They Said Barbeque It." is a particularly amusing anecdote that has very little to do with the stick formation which it has been associated.

"There's no intentional narrative," Wentzel said. "Each section of the works just came together very organically."

Visit www.crawlspacegallery.com for more information.