Bookshock explores books, technique and technology. Whilst books created by artists and designers once displayed formal characteristics specific to their respective disciplines, the possibilities offered by technology today allow for unprecedented fusions.
The exhibition explores this transformation by comparing books by designers, artists’ books and hybrid books — artists’ books created using a variety of techniques, not just printing — in which design, materials and artistic research combine to restore the book to its full complexity: an object to be looked at and explored, in which the conceptual dimension coincides with the tangible reality of the material.
ADI DESIGN MUSEUM
PIAZZA COMPASSO D’ORO 1 — MILAN
23 OCTOBER / 8 NOVEMBER 2026
CALL for Artists And Designers
Have you created an artist’s book or a piece of innovative book design?
Take part in the Oggetto Libro Digital Archive A growing archive dedicated to works that rethink and reinvent the book form.
We are looking for projects that express research, experimentation, and innovation. No limits on technique, theme, or format.
OBJECT BOOK IS AN INITIATIVE – THE ONLY ONE OF IT’S KIND IN THE WORLD – WHICH PROPOSES, THROUGH THE BOOK, A REFLECTION ON THE APPEARINGLY DISTANT AREAS OF DESIGN AND ART.
BOOK OBJECT BELIEVES AND STIMULATES CULTURAL CONTAMINATION AND PROPOSES ITSELF AS A WITNESS TO THE NEW FORMS OF CONTEMPORARY EXPRESSION CONFIRMING THE AUTHORITY AND VALUE OF THE BOOK AS AN INSTRUMENT OF KNOWLEDGE.
LIBRO D’ARTISTA
Artist’s book as a manifestation of the individual’s desire to express a testimony, disseminate an experience, share a common feeling, offer a yearning for poetry, an anticipation of the future, a warning, a topic that investigates the human soul to become universal.
HYBRID BOOK
Hybrid book as an artist’s book created with printing techniques and various technologies to generate the contents.
BOOK DESIGN
Book design as a product of a project intended for the publishing industry with the aim of spreading knowledge, transmitting memory or celebrating excellence.
Book Object received the Honorable Mention of the Compasso d’Oro 2018, the prestigious recognition of ADI Italian Industrial Design Association, in June 2018.
In 2017 also received the Lombardy Region Award dedicated to Lombard excellence.
BOOK OBJECT | VIDEO
BOOK OBJECT | VIDEO
BOOK OBJECT | PROMOTERS
BOOK OBJECT | COLLABORATORS
Organization
SBLU_spazioalbello is a non-profit association founded with the aim of spreading visual culture, provoking doubts and moving questions in the search for beauty. It want to be a center of constructive provocation and a meeting point for creative people and enthusiasts, in a context now accustomed to any visual stimulus.
To achieve this goal, it proposes initiatives and exhibitions that involve the general public.