On `The Book of Marks`
Timothy Comeau‘s The Book of Marks is about the grandeur of mark-making and the hubris inherent in our conviction that anyone else will ever understand them. The Book itself is a 192 page graph paper notebook, each square of which the artist has “filled in with a mark”. The process, Comeau says, began in 1998. For Comeau, the indeterminate shapes with which he gradually fills his pages are similar to the runic shapes making up the alphabet of a language you do not understand. “The Book of Marks appears to contain a script”, writes Comeau. But if so, it is a script anterior to his ability to read it back. In a Borges story, Comeau’s exotic script would, in fact, turn out to be crystal clear-to someone.
Gary Michael Dault
Toronto, February 6, 2001
published in Artery Summer 2001
Vol. 7 Issue 4 p.8