Hands and Feet and Their Supports 

Matt Borruso 
Published by Visible Publications

“Some fully formed, others in a state of becoming, hands and feet and their supports. Cast and recast,
copied and recopied, rubber gloves, ur-feet, the feet of apes. Fragments that represent a whole, these
outermost extremities can stand in for humans. The hands and feet of ancient ancestors, present
selves, future monuments. Cast in concrete, some are simultaneously both hands and feet. Others
are just hands on paper, like cartoons or cave paintings.  Cheap materials that are all around us.
Materials used to construct shelter and transmit information.”

“The supports extend us. Stands on stands. Feet on tables, feet on shelves, glued up prints.  A support
can be ideological, structural, architectural. Technology can be a support. A support can be a big idea meant to save the world. It can be a matrix used to display objects in an exhibition. And sometimes
the supports are simple extensions—clothes on skin, or shoes on feet.”

“Becoming what supports us, what constructs us. Becoming the prosthetic that extends us.”

“Hands and Feet and Their Supports is the result of six years of collecting and assembling images related to a show of the same name that happened in 2018 at Cloaca Projects in San Francisco. The book consists of reference images, found photographs, scans, magazine clippings, .jpgs, installation documentation, and collages organized around a strict but invisible supporting grid. The pages were printed on a digital press, and the collating, sewn binding, and screen printed covers were all done by hand one book at a time.”

Softcover
8.5 x 11 inches
184 pages
2024