Double Player is an unconventional photographic book form by Peter Tomka that demands to be experienced by two people. This work unfolds and folds back into itself – a Möbius loop of imagery, or perhaps an ouroboros: an endless cycle of visual connections shared in real time between both viewers. Loosely inspired by the structure of a deck of playing cards, Double Player weaves together five distinct bodies of work – Bachelor Suite (2024), Heatwave Suite (2024), Watering Hole (2023), Three Works (2021), and Paternity Test (2021) – shuffled into a whole that reveals surprising connections and throughlines. The book strikingly opens with the word GAYLORD – in another context, the name of a legendary Los Angeles apartment complex, but here, a directive that sets the tone and calls the viewer to engage immediately with the ensuing images. The photographs are either created by the artist in a performative manner or appropriated from cinema, television, and pop culture, past and present. The circulation and repetition of motifs invite collaboration and reflection, emphasising the act of shared viewing as part of the work’s meaning. The book collides (both literally and metaphorically) at the halfway point, designed to be exactly the same from front to back – revealing no beginning or end, but rather an infinite loop that can be entered from any point. Double Player is published on the occasion of Peter Tomka’s inclusion in Made in L.A. at the Hammer Museum, and marks the artist’s first monograph. 112 pages, 25.4 x 33 cm, hardcover, TBW Books (Oakland).
