To create new art, Brian Dettmer trashes old books. The painter-turned-sculptor (TED Talk: Old books reborn as art) takes outdated reference materials such as textbooks and encyclopedias, seals them with varnish, then carves away at their pages with an X-Acto knife. Dettmer knifes through books swiftly from cover to cover to reveal images that explore our relationship to information. He adds no color or text; it’s all what he calls “a subtractive sculptural process.” Take a look at some of the amazing results.

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