Contemporary art is fascinated and in awe by the library-as-a-shrine, as a mausoleum. Stefaan Van Biesens installation ‘SKIN’ incorporates this form of watching. The piece consists out of a reconstruction of an imaginary library, like the one exhibited in ‘San Girolamo nello studio’ (ca. 1474), a painting by Antonello da Messina guarded in the National Gallery, London. The hermit in the painting reads a book from his private library, a wooden construction, platform-like, in a Gothic space. There are a few eyeholes exposing a serene landscape. The reader is unaware of the setting. Birds wait on the doorstep of the building and sing in an unintelligible language. Van Biesen made a reconstruction of this library, purposely putting the imaginary library into an actual one. A transit space, an open library where one can walk through without entering. A void space in and out of the world. At the same time, it is also a precise reconstruction of the painting’s library. The artist makes it literally accessible.

The installation is completed with videos of various libraries, with stills of book walls and interiors of writers, artists and philosophers. The books are visible but inviolable. The books are present as bearers of knowledge, with an invitation to watch, not to read. The piece communicates a wordless experience, emphasized by large monochrome canvasses. Colour, not words, interacts with the visitor. The installation is completed by a ‘walking library’. A few bookcases are placed amidst the identical cases of the guest library. The artist invited a hundred people to fill these cases with a worthwhile moment of a walking journey captured in a glass jar. This library of experience dialogues with the thousands of (other) books. The glass books mirror their concealed forms of experience.