Leftovers ’lifting

Gallery Splettstößer. January 2017

Nicole Morello born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, in west Paris studied art and languages in Paris. At the end of her studies she moved as a translator to Dusseldorf, Germany, where she very soon integrated the flourishing artists’ life. During the day she worked as a foreign language secretary, and spent her evenings with artists or making artworks. Her first pop-up books were made in those days. NM has always been fascinated by books, not because of their contents but because of their potentiality, their materiality, because of their mobility.

From the 1980s onward, NM devoted her time to the making of books, had a gallery in Paris and was represented in New York by Tony Zwicker, an eminent dealer specialized in artists’ books.

Her first books were pop-up books in the tradition of tunnel-books made in the 18th and 19th centuries. Flora and fauna inspired then the artist.

2004, NM dropped her cutters and started to go through her numerous boxes full of the leftovers of her pop-up books, which she had kept over the years.

The small pieces of cardboard with random shapes would inspire her for the next decade.

First, she used them as stencils to paint colourful patterns of irregular rings on large sheets of translucent paper, which she then either bound together into books of different sizes or which she let hang free in the space like “ books to walk through”.

In the next step she used the stencils as stamps to draw very intricate colourful patterns on large strips of translucent paper, which she likes to hang free from the ceiling to the floor in several layers. The delicate and light sculptures slightly move in the space.

The last step is the series of so-called “butterflies ‘boxes”. The colourful stamps are pinned on Styrofoam boards and then placed in a showcase, like entomologist‘s boxes. Some boxes are full of leftovers of white cardboard with dots of phosphorescent colour, sparkling at night.

NM’s interest has moved over the past years towards performances in which she explores sounds made by different papers, movements occurring while turning pages.

A few considerations out of Brigitte Splettstößer’s introducing speech on 2017.01.29