About the Book
An Atlas of Es Devlin, the first monograph on artist Es Devlin's genre-defying practice, is an experiential publication encompassing art, activism, theatre, poetry, music, dance, opera and sculpture.
Devlin's protean work is rooted in a life-long practice of reading and drawing. From sketches in the margins of texts, be they poetry, drama, song lyrics, opera libretti, climate reports or endangered species lists, emerge the technically advanced, collectively imagined universes for which she is globally renowned. Fragile miniature paintings, paper cuts and small mechanical cardboard models form the seeds of some of the most iconic, large-scale, multi-disciplinary cultural manifestations in recent times, from public sculptures and installations at Tate Modern, Serpentine, V&A, Barbican, Imperial War Museum and the Lincoln Center, to kinetic stage designs at the Royal Opera House, the Royal Ballet, the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala and the National Theatre, as well as Olympic Ceremonies, Super-Bowl half-time shows, and monumental illuminated stage sculptures for Beyonce, The Weeknd, U2, Rosalìa, Dr Dre and Kendrick Lamar.
Devlin's work is at once deeply personal and inherently collective. Over the past decade her art practice has engaged with biodiversity, linguistic diversity and collective AI-generated poetry. She views the audience as a temporary society and encourages profound cognitive shifts by inviting public participation in communal choral works.
Published in association with a retrospective exhibition opening at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York in November 2023, An Atlas of Es Devlin is a unique, sculptural volume of over 900 pages, including foldouts, cut-outs, and a range of paper types, mirror and translucencies, with over 700 colour images documenting over 120 projects spanning over 30 years, and a 50,000 word text featuring the artist's personal commentaries on each art work as well as interviews with her collaborators including Hans Ulrich Obrist, Bono, Benedict Cumberbatch, Pharrell Williams, Carlo Rovelli, Brian Eno, Sam Mendes, Alice Rawsthorn and Abel 'The Weeknd' Tesfaye. Each book is boxed and includes a die-cut print from an edition of 5000.
'Es is like superstring theory, at least eleven dimensions.'
Hans Ulrich Obrist
'Es knows how to bend the mind around corners of our experience.'
Benedict Cumberbatch
'Es takes our inchoate aspirations and sculpts them into a stage.'
Bono
'I wish we'd had Es as a psychologist on some of our projects.'
Brian Eno
'Es's mind is both forensic and associative. She is able to x-ray a play and then she starts to dream.'
Lyndsey Turner
'Es is a turning point for anyone she interacts with.'
Pharrell Williams
'Es creates moments in which we suddenly become aware of life and existing, and time.'
Carlo Rovelli
'With Es, there's no "No". She creates a whole universe.'
Abel 'The Weeknd' Tesfaye
About the Author :
Es Devlin creates large-scale sculptures that combine light, music and language. She has created stage sculptures for Beyonce, The Weeknd, U2, The Royal Opera House, National Theatre, La Scala and The Met Opera, as well as the 2022 Super Bowl featuring Dr Dre, Kendrick Lamar and Eminem, and the 2012 London Olympic Closing Ceremony. She was the subject of the Netflix documentary 'Abstract: the Art of Design', and has been awarded multiple Olivier, Tony and Emmy awards, as well as an Ivor Novello award and a CBE.
Review :
'Modern Britain’s answer to Leonardo da Vinci' - Sunday Times
'Category-defying... An exquisitely produced and immersive artwork in itself, containing photographs, texts, foldouts, pullouts, translucent overlays and cutout pages that reflect the intricacy and imaginative extent of Devlin’s processes, from concept to final iteration' - The New York Times
'Sculptural … as much art object as art book, the 900-page tome gorgeously layers stories and interviews, pull-outs of sketches, playing with cut-outs over images as it maps each set from concept to realisation' - Vogue
'An exquisitely designed gift book that keeps giving. Nine hundred pages open to offer fold-out sculptures, fragile little paintings, paper cuts, mechanical models, mirrors. They distil in miniature the genre-bending kinetic creations of the artist and designer who has set the stage for Beyoncé and Adele; experimental opera and the London Olympics; Trevor Nunn and AI poetry recitals' - Jackie Wullschlager, Best Books of the Year, Financial Times
'Hefty, multitextured … an interactive physical experience, requiring the reader to unfold sections, overlay others, skim and delve. Devlin’s aim with her work is “to restructure the human imagination”, and this book is part of that project … Amazement is her modus operandi – “The role of artists is to amaze people into changing their minds” – but she always returns to the primary text for her inspiration. Now she has created a primary text that will serve as inspiration for the rest of us' - Times LUXX
'The book reads like one of [Devlin's] stage sets; that is to say, it’s an experience. Featuring cutouts, foldouts, various paper types and sizes, mirrors, and other materials, the 900-plus-page book shows Devlin is more than a set designer for flashy pop stars but also an artist, a sculptor, a poet, and an activist' - Fast Company
'[Devlin’s] smallest-scale but most personal project to date … Part-memoir, part-monograph, the volume comprises her life story, favourite creations and conversations with collaborators including Virgil Abloh, Carlos Rovelli and Pharrell Williams, alongside exercises for the reader. There are shapes to cut out, pages to unfold, annotated scripts to read and mirrors to see yourself in' - Reference.Point
'From the cardboard sculptures and paintings that developed into stage sets for the 2012 Olympic closing ceremony and the 2022 Super Bowl, to her activism, theater, poetry and more, this 900-page monograph traces ... Es Devlin's three-decade-long career across disciplines' - The New York Times Book Review
'Despite its heft, the book's complex form...feels intimate and inviting... A surprising variety of translucent and mirrored papers, page sizes, die cuts, and other unexpected moments invite readers to pause and appreciate the object they hold in their hands. The ideas startle, provoke, and reward. Devlin searches for ways to provide dopamine hits. As with her designs for the stage, she invites readers to become part of a temporary society traveling through a rich, creative landscape of observing and feeling... An Atlas of Es Devlin is an immersive, joyful reading experience, an encyclopedia of creativity, and a tribute to the sculptural possibilities of the printed book. It gives form and substance to the artist’s philosophy of why she creates' - PRINT
'Vibrant photographs of Devlin's stage and arena structures contrast with the simplest of doodles, and everything in between. There are booklets within booklets; there are holes to look through and ideas to imagine… 858 pages altogether, in which the entire expanse of Devlin’s world is mapped out (hence the title) in vivid color and sumptuous design... One of our most brilliant and creative modern artists comes to scintillating life before you' - Goldmine
'An extravagant catalog, a doorstop designed by Devlin and Lipps with Thames & Hudson nearing 1,000 pages and containing thousands of words by the artist, herself a clear and generous writer … Documenting far more work than the exhibition - including her Damien Hirst-like LED cubes for Jay-Z and Ye - the book serves as both hatchling and egg … Sincerely interesting and aggressively tactile' - The New York Times, 19.1.24
