TOUT encyclopaedia

Mattia Denisse, 
edited by João Maria Gusmão

Published by Pato em Pequim and Mousse Publishing

2023
English / Portuguese
352 pages, 318 color reproductionsSoftcover, 244 x 292 mm

NOTE that every COVER of this publication is UNIQUE, bound with an exclusive handmade MARBLE PAPER.  Your copy of  TOUT is one of the kind.

ISBN 978-98-9333-665-6
ISBN 978-88-6749-548-1

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€45 / $50

 
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Citizens!

Finally, in your hands, is a unique copy of the opus TOUT, an artist’s encyclopaedia by Mattia Denisse, a French fella, born in Blois in the year nineteensixtyseven.

This essential opus, originally spawned in India ink and coloured pencil, made use of an obsolescent eco-friendly resource, the palimpsest, consisting of prior printed recycled paper, card or parchment to provide the contemporary bookworm with tomes that conform to their literary interests. And this indeed has come to pass! Making good use of the cellulose from a moribund encyclopaedia, Denisse has ventured to trace his own eloquent version of the universe. Libertarian and situationist, this gesture in no way supplants the poiesis of his exegesis! A repository of mythologems, anagrams, paradoxes, metaphors, rare metonyms and observations, violence and candour, plus notes from the world within and the world without.

The book contains drawings aplenty, roughly threehundredandtwenty, in colour and black&white, done between twothousandandtwenty and twothousandandtwentythree. The volume was compiled by João Maria Gusmão, a devotee of Denisse’s art and himself an artist but of another sort. On the back pages of the book, Gusmão has written a brief opuscule, in this case a surreal killer of a thriller, providing clues to Denisse’s vade mecum but leaving the meaning of his work unresolved, thereby in no way lessening the efforts of future art historians.

Also notably, every TOUT is a unique and distinct specimen! The marbled paper on the cover was made by a team of dabbling marblers who offered their services for the purpose of personalising each and every one of the frontispices of this book.

On a further point, this admirable publication would not have been possible without the commitment of a few felicitous folk. A high five for Armando Cabral and Maria João Santos, a bearhug for the New National Museum of Monaco and Célia Bernasconi, and a tin of sardines for ZDB bookshop and Natxo Checa.

Do not dither! It won’t be on the shelves for long.

Don’t forget the rule of the three Cs: TOUT! A book that’s cheeky, cheerful and cheap, or thereabouts, but then again you can’t put a price on sentimental value.