Jaro Varga – The Yellow Book

The Yellow Book is a project by artist Jaro Varga based on a comparative critical reading of various bibliographic collections with references from the artist’s personal library. The project, curated by Erich Weiss, consists of ephemeral interventions in emblematic libraries in the city of Barcelona, such as the Arús Public Library, the Fundació Antoni Tàpies and the Picasso Museum, and is completed with the publication of an artist’s book and an installation in Chiquita Room, which brings together titles from his own archive in relation to those chosen from the collections of these libraries.

Jaro Varga’s project takes as its starting point the tradition of ‘the double cover’ and the British magazine The Yellow Book with its unmistakable yellow cover. This design was intended to draw attention to the subversive magazine, and it was this same aesthetic that contributed to the fall of the periodical. In 1895, Oscar Wilde was arrested for indecency, and under his arm he carried a book of yellow covers that viewers assumed was The Yellow Book. However, Wilde was only carrying a French novel, as decadent French novels were notoriously adorned with yellow covers. Wilde had never collaborated on The Yellow Book, but it was related to sodomy, which led to the defamation of the quarterly publication.

In the reading and study spaces of the Picasso Museum, the Fundació Antoni Tàpies Library and the Arús Public Library Jaro Varga carry out discrete, almost invisible actions, which consist of making subtle ephemeral transformations to the covers of selected books from the libraries’ collections. Varga expands his role as an artist to that of a librarian or researcher, who seeks to (re)discover the multiplicity of layers that unfold beyond the dominant narratives. Performatively, the artist transfers his practice from the studio to libraries and intuitively selects titles to connect them with new references, rethinking personal versus universal knowledge, and making visible the gaps in dominant discourses.

Jaro Varga is a Slovak visual artist and curator based in Prague, Czech Republic. He earned a master’s degree and doctorate from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, and also participated in student exchanges at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, the Academy of Fine Arts in Wroclaw and Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania in the USA. He has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at home and abroad, including Where do we go from here? at the Vienna Secession (2010), Public Folklore at the Grazer Kunstverein in Graz (2011), Delete at the Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava (2012), Vulnerable Failures at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul (2013), City Diary at the Triangle Arts Association in New York (2013), Dysraphic City at Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien in Berlin (2013), When Artists Speak Truth at The 8th Floor Gallery in New York (2016), Prague Biennale 6 (2013), Bucharest Biennale 7 (2016), In Someone’s Else Dream at SODA Gallery in Bratislava (2017), Missing Something and Itself Missing at Ivan Gallery Bucharest, About Books at AlbumArte Rome (2018), History is His Story at NEST ruimte voor kunst, The Hague (2019) and many others.

From March 15th to May 15th at Picasso Museum, Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Arús Public Library and Chiquita Room, with the collaboration of Czech Center.