People and books both tell their stories through their backs.
«Book Composition 2»
2016

While we tend to think of the cover as the face of a book, this work takes as its starting point the perspective that what we most often face and stare at, whether in a library or on our bookshelves at home, is in fact the spine of the book.

The beautiful weave of the spine, created by the intricate binding technique, is something we would like you to look at up close or with a magnifying glass rather than from a distance. The binding method is thought to be derived from Coptic binding, and although it is not the author's original, the name is uncertain. It opens easily and is highly durable, so he likes this binding method and has used it to this day. He says that he likes the intuitive act of punching holes in a single sheet of paper and binding it, rather than binding quires together.

From the production standpoint, «Book-Composition 2» went through the exact same process as making a book: deciding the size, the number of pages, cutting the paper, gluing them together, punching holes for thread, and carefully binding them together with thread. After the binding process is complete, a rectangular hole is cut into the cardboard base so that the bound book fits perfectly, and the book is inserted and fixed in place. There is not even a single gap between the white paper base and the book, making it look as if the book is growing out of the wall.

The idea for this project was to find a way to beautifully display books without using bookshelves or tables. The artist faced this problem head-on and started working on the "Book-Composition" series. This is a way to display books using walls, i.e. vertical surfaces. The challenge of using walls for book art is still ongoing, and has led to the "MEDIUM" series, which was announced in March 2022.

About the Book Composition series, the author says:

If there is a single piece of paper, it is just paper, and I do not recognize it as a "book." If there are multiple pieces of paper stacked on top of each other, it is still just stacks of paper, not a "book." When I see multiple folded sheets of paper stacked on top of each other, and I see the stack of folded parts, I first recognize it as a "book." It seems that we perceive the object called a "book" through the "spine."
When choosing a book at a bookstore, when searching for a book among a large number of books at a library, when looking at the bookshelves in your own room, or when looking at the bookshelves of others, we read information from the spines of books and imagine more than what we see there. Even if a book has had a major impact on your life, you may have spent more time looking at its spine than reading its contents.

2019Hachinohe Book Center Gallery Exhibition "Yasutomo Ota Book Art Exhibition: Growing Up by Looking at the Back"