CARRIÓN, Ulises.

ulises carrión : stella maris.

Color pencil & graphite drawings throughout on translucent parchment paper. [38] leaves, laminated covers with title printed on upper cover & signature and date to inside of lower cover, metal spiral-bound. N.p.: 1988.

A unique illustrated bookwork created one year before Carrión’s passing, it was neither recorded in Agius and Ocampo’s catalogue raisonné nor part of Guy Schraenen’s 2016 exhibition Dear reader. Don’t read. Unlike the other drawn books that the artist made in his final years, this one was not laminated, excepting the covers. His signature is found on the inside of the laminated lower cover, with the date “’88.” On each leaf of thin tracing paper are six black ink lines. On top of the lines, Carrión has drawn wavy lines in colored pencil (white, purple, yellow, gray, blue, and brown), which, as the reader turns the pages, remain visible several leaves later until they are finally obscured.

In excellent condition but for the faintest foxing to the last few leaves. Very little is known about the unique drawn bookworks that Carrión made in the 1980s. From the collection of Guy Schraenen (1941-2018), friend and creative partner to Carrión and the foremost chronicler of Carrión’s life and works through the exhibitions “We have won! Haven’t we?” (1992) and Dear reader. Don’t read. (2016).

❧ Not in G. Schraenen, ed., Dear reader. Don’t read. (2016).

Not in J. J. Agius & R. Ocampo, eds., Ulises Carrión: Books & More, Catalogue Raisonné (2013).