Kissing the Pavement

(Besando el Pavimento)

Printed by Arte Dos Gráfico
Book size 86 inch. X 19 1/2 inch. X 1.18 inch.
218.44 cm. x 49 cm. X 3cm.
Silkscreen on single sheet of paper.
Edition of 75 copies

Kissing the pavement is a slang term used in Latin America, referring to when a person is stabbed and left on the street to die. As the direct opposite of equality and order, this book addresses the situation in Bogotá, which is characterized by social indifference and escalating violence. Nonetheless, in the mother tongue Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a death threat sounds like this: I am going to leave you kissing the pavement.

The book is 7 (seven) feet long, and I fit in it like a coffin. It is printed on a single sheet of paper in a 5-layered silkscreen. The accordion folds, deconstructs, and fragments the large image of a male on one side, and a female on the other. The golden ground re-contextualizes these bodies, elevating them to quasi-religious iconography; breaking for an instant the ultra-violent death, so that these beings can indulge in a peaceful, golden sleep.



Kissing the Pavement, book Art by Alejandro Castaño Isaza is a publication by Taller Arte Dos Gráfico, Bogotá, Colombia. It consists of an edition of 75 Arabic numbered copies over Tiziano China paper of 160 grm. from Fabriano. The accordion shape is a single sheet folded in 18 parts of 13 cm. x 48cm. each.

It was finished printed under the care of Maria Eugenia Niño on the serigraphy and bookbinding studios of Taller Arte Dos Gráfico, illuminated by the same sun that lights the north coasts of the Pacific Ocean of the American continent and the altiplano cundiboyacense, in August of 2008.


Bancroft Library, Special Collections
Berkeley, CA

Special Collections
Stanford CA