Speaks volumes

Private Views are not normally a good place actually to see an exhibition. In truly eighteenth-century style, they are much more for seeing and being seen, making chat and probably drinking one too many glasses of the available fizz. If you want to see the work you need to return on a quieter day when there aren't beautiful people in the way. But sometimes there is work that holds its own in such a setting.

Such work was Martin McGinn's on Thursday evening at the comparatively new Piper Gallery near Tottenham Court Road in London. His exhibition Volume 1 features still life oils of art history books, ranging from single pages, to volumes, to groups of books. The concept is to say something about the artist or movement with the style of the painting as much as the book in question. Thus, the red edges of Rothko's book recede into a yellow ground, and the catalogue of New York's MOMA is shown 'embracing' a Sotheby's catalogue. This is an interesting idea which works to varying degrees, sometimes feeling heavy handed, sometimes making the book feel weightless, losing the sense of monumentality that was presumably intended.

I felt it worked better with the single pages of art books featuring colour images, especially a Mondrian Discarded and a Screwed-up Hobbema. On the spectrum between art as ephemeral or monumentaly, the former had some quiet grace, surprisingly even in the bustle of a private view. But, perhaps I'll see something else when I return on a quieter day; the volumes might speak differently.