This is a really smart conceptually-based accordion that reworks gay printed ephemera in a manner that really utilizes the opportunities opened up by the accordion format. Also included in this book is a very informative interview conducted with Silano by José Diaz about his interests and the larger background to this book. This accordion is named after the 1976 song by the Ronettes which is about a girl who's devastated at the ending of a love affair, and these themes resonate throughout Silano's book as well.
Below is a really concise synopsis of the book that I found on the website 'Grenade in a Jar Books' (grenadinajar.com) by an anonymous author.
"American conceptual artist Pacifico Silano’s practice is rooted in excavating the printed ephemera of gay culture to create new images that comment on loss, longing and queer melancholy. In particular, Silano uses the gestures of framing, cropping and layering vintage gay erotica to comment on the HIV/AIDS crisis and its reverberations on queer lives, which included the loss of the artist's uncle at the height of the epidemic.
I Wish I Never Saw the Sunshine is Silano’s first artist’s book, and engages with an ambitious accordion-folded format that references Silano’s photo-based installations: two twenty-panel long sequences that can be read as both one continuous collage and a sequence of individual images. Included in the book is an interview with the artist by José Diaz, Chief Curator of The Andy Warhol Museum."
39 pages in total, double-sided, individual pages 10" x 8", and when fully open 26'.
back cover
