The Daily Glance--Vassilakis

Nico Vassilakis has posted several of his books.  Reading through them, I want to change his name on them to mine, for they create an awesome experience I am envious of, though I am only going to focus on two books here.  Asemic Fallacies is filled with pieces that appear to be done on folded cardboard with white paper in the middle.  They have a similar design on the cardboard and what looks like Arabic on the white.  It's no secret that I am fascinated by Asemic work.  I remember being floored by it the first time I saw Tim Gaze's work years ago.  Like those, these pieces suggest meaning without giving us words we recognize.  They push us to use our standard critical strategies while suggesting those strategies will be useless.  These pieces are beyond what we can say but are beautiful and suggestive at the same time.  Diesel Hand feels like quite a different book.  The pieces all contain what appears to be a diagram of a machine closely surrounded with or covered over by text.  The text itself has no spaces, capitals, or punctuation.  It sometimes seems to contain words, while at others times it is just letters, so it feels like a find the word game.  Like the pieces in Asemic Fallacies, these pieces seem like something one would find and then try to interpret, but the missing history or meaning is intentional.   These pieces make us question the meaning making process and seem to suggest we sit with the pieces instead of push them.