Delightful Nature Illustration Collage Installations Made from Cut Books by Andrea Mastrovito

Artist Andrea Mastrovito creates delightful collage installations in which hundreds of nature illustrations populate an empty room in a dense paper diorama. He has created two versions of the installation: “The Island of Dr. Mastrovito” (2010) featuring illustrations from 1,100 cut books, and “The Island of Dr. Mastrovito II” (2012) featuring 1,200 cut books. The installations are a play on the H. G. Wells novel The Island of Doctor Moreau:

His starting points for this site-specific work are the two most common forms of home recreation—books and television. The title of his installation refers to H. G. Wells’ famous novel The Island of Doctor Moreau, in which the archetypal “mad” scientist experiments upon animals in order to give them human traits. In this “Island,” the artist substitutes himself for the doctor, trying to instill a new life into that which was once alive in a different way (books from paper, paper from wood, and wood from trees). Mastrovito imagines that the outside fauna take control of the abandoned house and become its proper inhabitants.

photos via Andrea Mastrovito

via Colossal