Rzlbd Letters - by Reza Aliabadi (Paperback)

About the Book

"With a vintage typewriter in hand, Reza Aliabadi (who works under the pseudonym RZLBD) revives the lost craft of letter writing. With his ongoing project "RZLBD Letters," he revisits the capacity of the letter as a medium and a manual typewriter as an instrument beyond their utilitarian purpose. For over two years, the Toronto-based artist and architect has submitted himself to typing over 200 imaginary, heartfelt pages to historical artists who have inspired him deeply. Paying homage to figures including Yoko Ono, Donald Judd, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and even Pi, the language on the surface at first glance may seem familiar; yet, looking closer, only each artist can fully decipher the meaning of their particular letter. While some letters only took a couple of hours (writing to figure Pi for instance), others took 365 days. RZLBD Letters breathes new life into the art of letter writing"--

Book Synopsis

With a vintage typewriter in hand, Reza Aliabadi (who works under the pseudonym RZLBD) revives the lost craft of letter writing. With his ongoing project RZLBD Letters, he revisits the capacity of the letter as a medium and a manual typewriter as an instrument beyond their utilitarian purpose. For over two years, the Toronto-based artist and architect has submitted himself to typing over 200 imaginary, heartfelt pages to historical artists who have inspired him deeply. Paying homage to figures including Yoko Ono, Donald Judd, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and even Pi, the language on the surface at first glance may seem familiar; yet, looking closer, only each artist can fully decipher the meaning of their particular letter. While some letters only took a couple of hours (writing to figure Pi, for instance), others took 365 days.

Review Quotes

RZLBD revives the lost craft of letter writing.

--designboom

About the Author

Reza Aliabadi (born 1974), known as RZLBD, is a Canadian artist and architect of Persian origin. He is the founder and principal of Atelier RZLBD, an art and architecture practice based in Toronto, named after a pseudonym he adapted that reflects his interest in abstraction and reduction. His repertoire of work extends to making arts, crafting objects, designing buildings, curating installations, and publishing a zine called rzlbdPOST.

His work has been distinguished with numerous accolades, exhibited in many venues, and celebrated in more than 100 print publications. In 2017, RZLBD was selected among the top emerging design talents in Canada. In the same year, the UK publisher Artifice released a monograph, RZLBD Hopscotch, that recognizes Aliabadi's selected built projects by collecting essays, project profiles, and annotated drawings. In 2020, Actar published a pocket-size manifesto, The Empty Room, in which Reza explores the idea of emptiness as the essence of architecture. His most recent book, 100 Rooms, is a sequel to that title by the same publisher. In 2023, he was appointed as the inaugural Vignelli Center Designer in Residence to begin the conceptualization, planning, and determining of the overall thematic direction of the RIT Outdoor Museum project.