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The imagery of the sumi drawings must be approached in terms of the endless
juxtaposition, contrast and harmony of signs and symbols: an Egyptian
hieroglyphic, the American Indian sign for abundance, an imperfect circle
as the expression of the inexpressible. Things are not what they seem,
nor are they otherwise.
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2. A Small Book Of Engraved Mountain Stone Seals
1993
Seal engravings by Stefan Arteni imprinted by hand through the application
of vermillon seal paste. Bound in shuincho format. Housed in a
handmade cloth covered box, designed by Myriam S.P. de Arteni. Accompanied
by a blank stone seal to be engraved by the artist with the collector's
name. 3 1/2 x 5 inches. One-of-a-kind book, signed by the artist.
Seal, or chops as they are commonly called by Westerners, were favored
by the Chinese literati as a cultivated pursuit. Ancient script styles
were seen in a non-continuum in which the artist should achieve an inner
response to the model, rather than imitate it.
"A small book of engraved mountain stone seals" an album of seal impressions,
contains the traditional complete collection of the artist's signature
seals up to 1993.
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3. Encountering Sorrow
1993
Gold edged shikishi boards,with seal engravings by Stefan Arteni,
impressed by hand through the application of vermillon seal paste. Bound
in orihon format between boards covered in silk brocade. Protected
by a maruchitsu wrap-around case. Housed in a handmade box designed
by Myriam S.P. de Arteni containing a blank seal to be engraved with the
collector's name by Stefan Arteni. 7 x 9 1/2 inches. One-of-a-kind book,
signed by the artist.
Seal engraving, or seal cutting, and important aspect of the literati's
tradition, is a combination of literature, calligraphy, engraving, and
tactile experience.
"Encountering Sorrow" is a variation of speech for the title
of the masterpiece by Ch'u Yuan, immortalyzing the quintessential spirit
of the many personal and metaphysical implications of dissident loneliness,
within the conceptual framework of a meditation on art, life and knowledge.
The text, in the ancient form of seal script, has been engraved in a variety
of compositional schemes.
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4. A Large Book Of Recently Engraved Stone Seals
1993
Seal engravings by Stefan Arteni impressed by hand though the application
of vermillon seal paste. Bound in shugacho format between boards
covered in silk brocade. Housed in a box designed and made by Myriam S.
P. de Arteni containing a blank seal to be engraved by Stefan Arteni with
the collector's name. 6 1/2x10 inches. One-of-a-kind book, signed by the
artist.
Seal cutting or engraving is an aspect of Chinese art, little known in
the West. The same word (yin) is used for both printing and seals
or chops.
"The Large Revealed In The Small" and "All Quite At Random,"
two intimate poems of respectively five and seven characters verses, have
been compiled by Stefan Arteni mainly from inscriptions on classical Chinese
paintings, as a deeply personal response paralleling the individualism
of 17th century monk painters in an era of trouble and grief. The book,
whose subtitle might be "Word as Image", unfolds in time and space revealing
unexpected thoughts on art and life.
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5. The Large Emerging from the Small
1994
Foreword by Myriam S. P. de Arteni. Suite of fifteen sumi ink drawings
by
Stefan Arteni on handmade Papel Zepia. Three letterpress pages handset
in Goudy Old Italian and printed on Handmade Papel Zepia. Bound in orihon
format. Housed in a handmade box. Designed and printed by
Myriam S.P. de Arteni. 12 1/2 x 15 inches. One-of-a-kind book. Colophon
signed by designer and artist.
Brush work is not conceived of simply as a decorative device. It is meant
to exemplify a view of being. The brush strokes follow subtle principles
of positive and negative design. They are diagrams of the dynamic but
harmonious balance of the universe. Expressing oneself through calligraphic
brushwork, one borrows from the insight that understanding is wordless.
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6. A Book Of Collected Seal Script Carvings
1994
Seals engraved by Stefan Arteni, impressed by hand through the application
of vermillon seal paste, with cicada - wing rubbings of side inscriptions.
Bound in shugacho format. Housed in a box designed and made by
Myriam S. P. de Arteni. 7 1/4 x 10 3/4 inches. One-of-a-kind book. Signed
by the artist.
The East, with its deep-rooted effacement of the individual, accomplishes
through allusion the resonance with classic texts, moving to another dimension
of awareness and release, when all has been silenced. Symbols are personalized.
The carved words explore the wavering between urbanity and self-immersion
in the norm of quiet, the forgotten vow for a reclusive life in an age
of dislocated identity. It is the music of a silence.
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7. The Thinker as Poet
1994
Twelve poems by Martin Heidegger translated into English by A. Hofstadter.
Original calligraphy and drawings in sumi ink on Japanese handmade paper
by Stefan Arteni. Unbound, protected by a wrapper. Housed in a handmade
box designed by Myriam S. P. de Arteni. Fifteen folios 16 x 22 inches.
One-of-a-kind book. Colophon signed by designer and artist.
Man has withdrawn so far from himself that he no longer sees himself at
all. Knowledge has progressed to the point of cancelling itself out. Man's
history appears as data at once incomplete and yet too abundant. The flight
of the gods, the destruction of the earth, the standardization of man,
are nothing less than signs of this darkening. To say: saga. Man
possesses language in order to say who he is and to give testimony. All
of man's creation testifies to his dwelling on the earth. The task of
cultivating and caring (Colere, Cultura) finds its avatars
in the artist, the poet and the thinker. They are the sayers who more
daringly say.
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8. Casual Writings By A Window
1995
Original calligraphy and seal engravings by Stefan Arteni. Seals impressed
by hand through the application of red seal-paste. Bound in accordion
format. Housed in a handmade box designed by Myriam S. P. de Arteni. 11
x 16 inches. One-of-a-kind book. Signed by the artist.
The basis for this meditation on art and life is the way of the pilgrim
drifting from place to place, searching for a way to apprehend truth directly.
The text uses mainly five and seven characters for each line.
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9. Ai Tai I's Carvings
1995
Seal engravings by Stefan Arteni impressed by hand through the application
of vermillon seal-paste. Bound in accordion format. Housed in a handmade
wrapper designed by Myriam S. P. de Arteni. 6 5/8 x 10 inches. One-of-a-kind
book. Signed by the artist.
This album of seal-impressions (yinpu) contains the complete collection
of engraved stone seals carved by Arteni to date.
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10. Wandering
1995
Poem by Muso Soseki translated into English by W. S. Merwin and
Soiku Shigematsu. Sumi ink monotypes by Stefan Arteni. Two letterpress
pages printed by Myriam S. P. de Arteni. Bound in accordion format. Housed
in a handmade box designed by Myriam S. P. de Arteni. 9 1/2 x 10 3/4 inches.
One-of-a-kind book. Signed by the artist.
This album of sumi monotypes, based on variations on the characters for
pilgrim (unsui: clouds and water), is inspired by Muso Soseki's
poem about the wandering seeker. They are assemblages of pictures having
an improvisation character, heightening the awareness of emptiness by
compositional cohesiveness and varying textures.
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11. Cantique de Saint Jean
1996
Poem by Stephane Mallarme. Original calligraphy and monotypes interspersed
within text by Stefan Arteni. Paper hand made in China, Mexico, and the
Philippines. Designed and bound by Myriam S. P. de Arteni. Box made by
Myriam S. P. de Arteni. Edition of 2. 12 1/2 x 15 1/2 inch (31.7 x 39.2
cm.) Signed by designer and painter.
The echo of an inexpressible can be heard in CANTIQUE DE SAINT JEAN, the
last part of Mallarme's Herodiade. He sings of the nearness of the power
of the word. The word appears as the mysterious wonder. It rings out in
silence.
In a dark and deprived time the poet utters the holy: a language that
responds to and recalls the unspoken. Images are bidden to come to this
place of meeting. Rhythm, that what forms the movement of dance and song
and poem, fittingly reemerges in the essential schemata of Byzantine painting
tradition.
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12. Democratie
1996
Poem by Arthur Rimbaud. Sanguine etching ink calligraphy and monotypes
by
Stefan Arteni. Bound in a flutter format. Housed in a handmade box designed
by Myriam S. P. de Arteni. 16 x 12 1/2 inch. One of a kind. Signed by
the artist.
A historical crisis produces an age of uniformity. It happens that the
superficial framework of our civilization finds the mass-man possessed
of no truth of his own.
An intense and fast dream, this fragment from the "Illuminations" discloses
images in a pure state.
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13. Fool of a Cat
1997
Haiku by Issa, translated into English by Lewis Mackenzie. Original linoleum
cuts by Stefan Arteni. Design, mounting and handmade drop-spine box by
Myriam S. P. de Arteni. 7 1/2x 12x 1/2 inches (accordion book)
7 1/2x 54 1/2 inches (hanging scroll) Edition of 9.
Contrary to common belief, each cat has its own personality, thrives for
purrfection and has a strong sense or purrpaws. There were many important
cats in history and culture: Purricles of Athens; Cato the Roman; Leopardo
da Vinci, artist; Will Shakespurr, writer; etc.
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14. Coda
1997
Poem by Daniel Simko. Sumi ink monotypes and calligraphy by Stefan Arteni.
Bound in accordion format. Housed in a handmade box designed by
Myriam S. P. de Arteni. 9 1/2 x 10 3/4 inches. One-of-a-kind book. Signed
by the artist.
With few words, the poet achieves a quiet lucidity, a minimalist presentation
that is paradoxically resonant with levels of interpretation. Zao Wou
Ki said: "There is in the word 'nature' a notion of a cosmic world, a
melange, a mixing of space and silence." In its elegant simplicity, the
imagery functions on both the descriptive and the symbolic levels at once.
The historical knowledge of mental and physical dislocation and thus the
mutation of heritage through a strategic appropriation of the signs and
techniques of Oriental calligraphy, enables the painter to freely improvise
a movement born of meditation.
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15. River Bank
1997
Poem by Tu Fu, translated into English by Rewi Alley. Sumi ink monotypes
and callygraphy by Stefan Arteni. Bound in accordion format. Housed in
a handmade box designed by Myriam S. P. de Arteni. 9 1/2 x 10 3/4 inches.One-of-a-kind
book. Signed by the artist.
Tu Fu, the wandering scholar-artist, forced into hermit-like existence,
turned to poetry as a form of psychic self-defense, in a movement from
one time of pain into another. Through symbiosis of calligraphic abstraction
and painting, Arteni's monotypes suggest ceaselessly reinvented, renewed
spaces, perpetually vibrating. The dispersal or dark masses, blacks and
greys, amplify the transparencies and make the whiteness of the paper
resound more.
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