Paul Cézanne was a French artist who painted landscapes, bowls of fruit, and stoves, and whose work laid the foundations for painting in particular and visual arts in general in the 20th century. Cézanne bridged Impressionism with Cubism and other styles that sought to manifest the subjective quality of perception and time embodied in objective experiences of seeing reality as such. Wht was Cézanne? uses the spirit of Cézanne as a departure point to express, through layered texts and images, what concrete experiences of seeing reality today look and feel like. There is not a single image of Cézanne’s work, nor images of Cézanne himself in this book, as Cézanne would have preferred.

Wht is ?
This series of handmade books and e-books made by Paul Chan uses a special technique of overprinting images and texts onto existing sheets of book paper to create works that read like nothing else. The series premiered at the 2011 NY Art Book Fair. Each handmade book exists as an edition of one with two artist proofs, and as an e-book with a unique ISBN available on Apple iBooks.

Paul Chan is an artist who lives and works in New York. His work has been exhibited widely in many international shows including: Making Worlds, 53rd Venice Biennale, Venice, 2009; Medium Religion, ZKM, Karlsruhe, 2008; Traces du sacrê, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2008 and the Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of Art, New York, 2006. Recent solo exhibitions include Paul Chan: The 7 Lights, Serpentine Gallery, London and New Museum, New 2007–2008. In 2007, Chan collaborated with the Classical Theatre of Harlem and Creative Time to produce a site-specific outdoor presentation of Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot in New Orleans. Chan’s essays and interviews have appeared in Artforum, Frieze, Flash Art, October, Tate etc, Parkett, Texte Zur Kunst, Bomb, and other magazines and journals.