Brian Dettmer: Reading with a Knife
In a quiet Chicago studio, surrounded by stacks of vintage books, artist Brian Dettmer transforms one of our most familiar cultural objects—the book—into intricate works of sculpture. Removing layers page by page, Dettmer reveals hidden images and text that sit at the crossroads of sculpture, collage, and conceptual art. His work invites viewers to reconsider not only the physicality of the book itself, but also the ways we consume and interpret knowledge in a rapidly changing digital world.
“When I was a kid, I always knew I wanted to be an artist,” Dettmer recalls. “I was always drawing, always making things.” As a child, he remembers seeing Looney Tunes characters carve secret compartments into books, so he gave it a try—unknowingly creating what would become his first book sculpture. “I had an old dictionary, and I had carved into it,” he says, filling it with small objects despite having “nothing to actually hide.”
Raised in Naperville in the 1970s and ’80s, Dettmer describes both the comfort and constraint of growing up in suburbia. “I really wanted to break out of that box and move to the city and explore more things,” he says. “As an artist… you feel more free to just sort of explore your ideas and not worry about, you know, being weird or different.” That urge eventually led him to Columbia College Chicago, where he initially pursued animation before turning toward painting, collage, and ultimately, sculpture.
His signature process emerged almost by accident. After working in painting and collage—layering and tearing book pages onto canvas—Dettmer became uneasy about tearing books apart. “I really did feel guilty about that,” he says, “but I also thought that sort of added some tension and some depth to the actual piece itself.” While cutting a simple geometric shape, he unexpectedly uncovered a figure within the pages and instinctively began carving around it. That discovery changed everything. Instead of imposing an image, Dettmer began responding to what was already there, letting the book guide the process—beginning what has now become a decades-long collaboration.
Dettmer begins by sealing the edges of books with an acrylic varnish, then carves into them layer by layer, revealing hidden images and fragments of text. He describes it as “reading with a knife,” a process that is at once destructive and generative. “It’s really a collaboration between me and the existing material,” he explains. “I’m sort of interpreting the book, letting the book tell me what it wants to be.”
Working primarily with vintage volumes that carry both visual richness and cultural history, he often turns to encyclopedias, dictionaries, and illustrated reference books as his foundation. As these texts become remnants of the past, Dettmer’s sculptures serve as meditations on memory, knowledge, and an increasingly unstable digital landscape.
“We’re left with this material that we know is valuable and full of history,” he says, “but we don’t necessarily use them the way we used to.” His sculptures become metaphors for that transformation.
“It’s a completely subtractive process,” he adds, linking it to broader questions about media: what is shown, what is erased, and why.
For Dettmer, the book holds limitless potential. Each volume contains “an infinite number of different ways” it can be read or interpreted—a potential that mirrors the countless paths his own work might take as he carves through it.
To view more of Brian Dettmer’s work, visit his website.
