Jürgen O. Olbrich, Ticket on Tickets, 2024 and Ticket Leporello, 2025, Kassel, Germany

Repurposed leporellos from different contexts become ticket leporellos created by the comings and goings of this peripatetic German post-fluxist and concept artist based in Kassel. Distance and location become the major themes in these travel diaries that are documents of both time and space.

Tickets on Tickets, 2024

reverse side

6 double-sided pages, individually 4" x 8", and unfolded 4ft

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Ticket Leporello, 2025

reverse side

vertical orientation

12 double-sided pages, individually 4.25" x 3.25", and unfolded 3ft 3"

Jean Tinguely, Meta II, Alexander Iolas Gallery, New York, 1965 and Tinguely, Rijsmuseum Kroller-Muller, Netherlands, 1967

Jean Tinguely, Meta II, Alexander Iolas Gallery, New York, 1965

I was really surprised to discover these two fascinating accordion exhibition catalogues for Tinguely shows between 1965 - 1967. Somehow they didn't seem like the regular exhibition catalogues and upon examining them it became clear that what Tinguely had produced in both these accordions could more accurately be defined as artists' books. 

It's clear that Tinguely had a key role and a free hand in the design and production of these accordions, and there's a real relaxed attitude to the flow of the design and content, and in Meta II, for example, he's included in the image the tape holding the final edit together. It would appear that Tinguely has applied his auto-destructive tendencies to the structure of the exhibition itself.

Both books are not only places for documenting his works and installations, but he includes lots of sketches and other documents charting the course of his works over these different sections of career. The accordions feel like visual diaries, notebooks of intimate spaces where Tinguely reveals the different sides of himself, of his thinking and of his works.

28 single-sided pages, individually 8.75" x 6.75", when unfolded 15f.   _______________________________________________________________

Tinguely, Rijsmuseum Kroller-Muller, Netherlands, 1967

front 

reverse side

 

28 single-sided pages, individually 8.75" x 6.75", when unfolded 15ft 9"

back cover

Jean Tinguely, La Vittoria, Edition Seriaal, Amsterdam, 1971, with photographs by Ad Petersen

front cover

This is a wonderful piece of documentation of this totally wild auto-destructive sculpture that Jean Tinguely (1925-1991) performed in front of Milan cathedral on the night of November 28th, 1970. The "NR" attached to the front of the sculpture references the "Nouveaux Realistes", as this work was celebrating the 10th anniversary of the signing of the Nouveaux Realistes' manifesto by the original group of artists and Tinguely was one of them.

I'm including below a couple of paragraphs about this work by the writer Daniel Soar, who in a piece in the London Review of Books ("On Jean Tinguely," Feb. 6, 2025) recreates the spectacle for the reader:

"I wish I’d been there. On the night of 28 November 1970, in front of the Duomo in Milan, a sheet of purple drapery was removed to reveal a ten-metre-high golden penis, with a pair of massive golden papier-mâché balls on the plinth at its base. When darkness fell, a firecracker went off, and then another, as sparks and smoke issued from the tip, with louder explosions following, rockets shooting out everywhere, until the whole thing was a tower of flames erupting into the sky. Somewhere in the crowd a man sang ‘O Sole Mio’; within half an hour the structure had burned down.

This was Jean Tinguely’s self-immolating sculpture La Vittoria, or ‘Suicide of the Machine’. It was the culmination of a series of events celebrating, or mourning the death of, Nouveau réalisme, the movement founded in 1960 by the art critic Pierre Restany along with Tinguely, Yves Klein and others. The Nouveau réalistes were Europe’s answer to Pop Art, dedicated to the ‘poetic recycling of urban, industrial and advertising reality’ through collage, assemblage and Dadaist performance. It was also a giant fuck-you to whatever you like: the patriarchy, the Church, the sanctity of museum-bound art. As part of the festival, Tinguely’s wife, Niki de Saint Phalle, executed one of her Tirs, firing a gun at capsules of paint which exploded over an altar."

11 single-sided pages, individual pages 6" x 4.5", and unfolded 4ft 1.5"

iOiO-studio, Pliplop, France/Korea, 2020

front cover

A fun double-gate fold leporello from this hip design firm with offices in Paris and Korea. The French text on the back reveals that the larger theme to their use of this particular format is one of interactivity: "Pliplop, a micro-edition leporello inviting you to be a player and an actor. Folding the paper allows you to combine shapes and create others by addressing various notions such as rhythm, scale, color, contrast, movement and landscape."

8 single-sided pages (2 accordions), individual pages 4.75" x 2" and when each is unfolded they are 1ft 4".

back cover