art

Book Sculptures

Caballero’s Book Sculptures are an eight-part series that questions how society values poetry. This series proposes the book as a sculptural object, and will see Caballero print eight different books, each as an edition of one, with a unique ISBN and the anatomy and structure of a traditional book.

The books in this series contain only one poem, printed 197 times in their pages. When taken as integers, the digits in 197 add up eventually to 8, a number that represents abundance.

Developed with a bespoke book binder, the works in this series are stunning objects yet remain very authentically books, with a table of contents, an author page and a dedication, which is hand-signed and dedicated to its collector.

Four editions of Book Sculptures have been released: The Wish, Another Airport Poem, Milk and Echo Graph.

The Wish is from Caballero’s prize-winning book Mammal and was originally published by the South Dakota Review. It was exhibited at the Lumen Prize-shortlisted exhibition Poème SBJKT at Librairie Métamorphoses in Paris in 2023. Another Airport Poem was exhibited at MedSeArt in Menorca.

Milk received the Academy of American Poets Christopher R. Kelly Award and debuted at Phillips Auction House during London Frieze Week. It was also presented at Art Basel Miami in 2024 and during Art Genève in 2025. Echo Graph debuted at Madrid’s Rosewood Villa Magna, at an event hosted by Christie’s and then was a centerpiece in Caballero’s solo show at Office Impart in February 2025.

Collectors of Book Sculptures receive an MP4 of a single page of the book endlessly turning while Caballero reads the poem as well as a Bitcoin inscription of its verse, accentuating the artist’s expansion of the ways poetry can be experienced, exhibited and transacted in the digital age.