By Islam Aly
Iowa City, Iowa: Islam Aly, 2013. Edition of 20.
2.8 x 3 x 3.5"; 400 pages. Mould-made Johannot paper. Laser engraved edges. Bound in embossed leather boards with coptic and Ethiopian binding techniques. Signed and numbered by the artist.
Islam Aly: "In this book Crucial Perimeter-1, I explore the dichotomy
between what's inside a book and what's outside. The book has no text or images on its folios. When the book is closed, the viewer can see the content on three edges of the book, but depending on how the book is opened some of the content on the edges diffuses and becomes illegible, converting into traces of texture."
"Crucial Perimeter is mainly about the beauty of the Arabic calligraphy, what you see on the covers and the edges are not words but rather letters written in Arabic calligraphy, the dots are used as a measuring unit , for example a letter would be seven dots long and two dots wide somehow similar to the x height used in western typography.
"The texts of marginalia came from old Arabic manuscripts again I was interested in these because of the beauty of the calligraphy and layout."