NEWS: Bridge Books Announces New Artist Book Title: Mat Rappaport’s “Treatments” Publication to Accompany Exhibition at Material, Chicago

Written By Michael Workman

NEWS

Bridge Books Announces New Artist Book Title: Mat Rappaport’s “Treatments” Publication to Accompany Exhibition at Material, Chicago

TREATMENTS: CATALOG AND ARTIST’S BOOK 

Bridge Books, a division of Bridge Art NFP, the registered Illinois 501 (c) 3 not for profit organization that publishes the Bridge Journal, the weekly online Bridge magazine at bridge-chicago.org, today announces its contract agreement to publish the catalog and essays of the "Treatments" photographic series by artist Mat Rappaport, made to accompany the exhibition at Material, Chicago, April 16 - May 14, 2023. Essay by Michael Workman. Poetry by Rachel J. Webster, and Josh Honn.

Mat Rappaport's Treatments is a deeply personal poetic meditation on illness, institutional space, and loss, documenting a body of photographic and installation works created over a two year timespan.

“This book collects some of the most challenging work I have made, and while difficult, it is a privilege to share and put it out in the world.” says Rappaport. “Treatments detail my observations of institutional spaces while navigating my partner’s experience with cancer. The journey coincided with our shared trauma of covid, during which she endured surgeries, radiation, chemotherapy and immunotherapy in Chicago, Milwaukee, and Los Angeles.” 

“I know readers will be enthralled with this as a photography collection.” says Bridge Books publisher Michael Workman. “It recalls for me the institutional documentation of Mary Ellen Marks’ Ward 81, the objects of the institutional space captured here in a way only glimpsed between the frames in that artist’s series, which were mostly portraits. A perfectly tidy lunch tray and salt shaker here become the silver half-dome security mirror, the errant red wall outlet alongside the waiting room portraits of the art framed and hung for patients, often with messages of perseverance or similar up-lifting message. “

View the full press release here.

Michael Workman

Michael Workman is a choreographer, language, visual and movement artist, dance and performance artist, writer, reporter, and sociocultural critic. In addition to his work at the Chicago Tribune, Guardian US, Newcity magazine, WBEZ Chicago Public Radio and elsewhere, Workman is also Director of Bridge, an artistic collective and 501 (c) (3) publishing and programming organization (bridge-chicago.org). His choreographic writing has been included in Propositional Attitudes, an "anthology of recent performance scores, directions and instructions" published by Golden Spike Press, and his Perfect Worlds: Artistic Forms & Social Imaginaries Vol. 1, the first in a 3-volume series, was released by StepSister Press in October 2018 with a day-long program of performances at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Most recently, two of his scores were accepted for publication in a special edition of the Notre Dame Review focusing on the work of participants in the &NOW Festival of Innovative Writing.

https://michaelworkmanstudio.com
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