Consumer culture has reached an apex! And it’s easier than ever to reproduce an infinite amount of images. With more immaterial material than ever up for grabs, what better time to reexamine artworks that confront feelings of fragmentation, randomness and abundance of imagery by piecing apart and re-assembling what already exists?

Cutting and pasting, ripping and taping, collage artists appropriate and alter society’s excess materials. Advertisements, newspapers, textbooks, found correspondences, photographs, works by other artists—all are equally open to modification in this selection of titles.

The books on this table are both abstract and narrative, beautiful and sexual, funny, scary, and down right disorienting. The variety of themes present here speak to the flexibility of collage as a medium and its continuing relevance as a practice.

This collection is just a small sampling of titles that feature collage available at Printed Matter— search the site by the “theme” collage to find hundreds more!