Nanopublication — Formal Ambiguity as Conceptual Method

Context

Sculptural form communicates through what it resolves and what it leaves open. A fully resolved figurative sculpture tells the viewer what it is; an abstract form invites interpretation without anchoring it. READER occupies a precise position between these poles — it suggests strongly enough that both readings (figure and book) present themselves immediately, but it refuses to confirm either as primary.

This refusal is the work's method. I needed a form that would hold both readings in permanent suspension, because the moment I depict — total absorption in a text — is exactly the state where the boundary between reader and book dissolves. If the sculpture clearly depicted a person, the book would become a separate object. If it clearly depicted a book, the reader would vanish. Neither option captures the fusion I intend. Only a form that is irreducibly both can carry the meaning.

The smooth, continuous curve supports this strategy. There are no joints, no articulations, no points where one reading yields to the other. The form flows from base to tip as a single gesture — the way concentration flows from the body's posture into the mind's engagement with the text, without interruption. The absence of segmentation is itself a formal claim: there is no seam between reader and book in the moment of absorption, and there is no seam in the sculpture.