The Sun As Error.

The Sun As Error. Work by Shannon Ebner. Wallis Annenberg, 2009. 64 pp., 233 black & white and 2 colour illustrations, 11x14".

American artist Shannon Ebner is perhaps best known for her work exploring language and its meaning through photography and sculpture.

Ebner's work has amongst other been included at The Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria, The Serpentine Gallery in London, the Tate Modern, and the 2008 Whitney Biennial.


In 'The Sun as Error' she continues her examination of photography, sculpture and language in collaboration with Dexter Sinister (design duo David Reinfurt and Stuart Bailey).

'The Sun as Error' "re-investigates the meaning and language of photographs, creating both an open-ended reading of her practice and also rethinking the idea of an artist’s monograph.

Far from straightforward, the book interweaves her bodies of work, previously unseen one-off pieces, with the language of technical diagrams, optical illusions, and graphic design.

One of the persistent motifs through the book’s sequence is an asterisk and, specifically, one imbued with the legacy of the graphic designer Muriel Cooper. As the first design director for MIT Press and the cofounder of the Visible Language Workshop, Cooper’s legacy for reorienting and repositioning the direction of an artist’s monograph is imaginatively explored in the creative partnership of Dexter Sinister and Shannon Ebner."

-- part of the publisher's description.

'The Sun As Error' was selected as one of photoeye's Best Books of 2009. You can also read a review of this book in photo-eye Magazine; and more about 'The Sun As Error' here for example.