MARTIN BRIEF
A Brief History of Time
ink on paper, 32.25” x 14.25”–24.875", 2014–2015
This project began with an examination of the primary holy texts from the world’s three dominant monotheistic religions; the Torah, the New Testament and the Qur’an. After analyzing the words in these three books I created a system for comparing them with the text of Stephen Hawking’s famous book, A Brief History of Time. Each of the twelve pieces is a handwritten transcription of a chapter from Hawking's book. The words are written on small (1/16” tall) paper “tiles”. The tiles are colored using gold, silver, bronze, and copper ink. The word written on each tile determines the color of the tile based on which of the holy books the word appears. If the word appears in all three religious texts it is gold, silver if it appears in two, or bronze if it appears in only one. If the word doesn’t appear in any of those texts and only appears in Hawking’s book it is written on a copper tile. In this way each of the twelve “mosaics” make a connection between the words in the three holy books and those in Hawking’s book.
Online catalogue available from Danese Corey.
