Books are objects and images in one. They embody ideas. When well designed, the graphics hold their own and react in combination with a title and its associations. The publication ‘Pietro Mattioli: Celestino Piatti dtv sonderreihe 1966–1979’ presents artist Pietro Mattioli’s collection of sonderreihe paperbacks. Here Mattioli’s fascination with books in general is focused on a publication series whose social, political and cultural impact has been significant in Europe. Moving through the world, the artist has tracked the movements of these books, these objects through which the intangible circulates. When he photographs a single used volume, he records all of this at once: the content, the vessel and its journey.

Pietro Mattioli was born in 1957 in Zurich, where he lives and works as an artist and freelance curator.