David Gista: Sanctuaries

Guild Room

For nearly twenty years, David Gista’s work has focused on books and libraries, creating paintings depicting various subjects within libraries or interacting with books. His exhibition explores our relationship with knowledge and information in a hyper-technological society, questioning whether books are merely objects and if libraries are becoming sanctuaries of a fading physical world.

Gista’s work often transforms books into shapes and colors reminiscent of pixels, highlighting the tension between the material and digital worlds. He uses traditional mediums like paint to emphasize this paradox. One notable technique involves drawing on paper with a torch flame, symbolizing both revelation and destruction, referencing historical book burnings and censorship.

Gista’s “burnt drawings” embody both ambivalence and ambiguity through themes that reflect on the intersection of nature and technology. He parallels nature and libraries as sanctuaries, all the while questioning whether technology will soon blur the boundaries between the natural world and a new frontier of augmented reality. 

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Photo Credit: David Gista