Two accordions from Editions Matière, the first one "La Method Bernadette" is an accordion publicity flier for a larger book about the fascinating story of how Editions Matière discovered a hoard of images created by a group of young women secretly consecrated to Christ, who in the early 1930s in the small French industrial town of Thaon-les-Vosges, developed a striking catechism method based on the use of black stencil drawings on white backgrounds in their fight to overcome "...the intellectual, moral, political and artistic depravity of the modern world."
Editions Matière describes Lagier's "aoto" this way: Aoto is the name of a district of Tokyo where Laurence Lagier briefly stayed. Lying on the paper, the landmarks she took there, which she remembers, mingle with the memories of an ancient scroll of the Tale of Genji and are transformed into as many signs (milestones, points, scales, straight lines, crossings, etc.) which allow one to move flexibly, with grace, that is to say with freedom, from the street to the architecture, from the plan to perspective, from outside to inside, from paper to space, from composition of abstract modules to representation, to drawing, to urban landscape, to narrative perhaps… Aoto is a neighborhood, is a leporello. Aoto is a free game. Aoto is a game....
Please refer to a previous entry about Editions Matière and their involvement with the new French Abstract Formalist Comics (French Structural Comics) — of which Lagier would certainly seem to be a participant: [Nicolas Nadé, Ingredients, Editions Matière, 2016 and Sammy Stein, Sculpture, Editions Matière, 2016]
Editions Matière, La Method Bernadette, 2008
7 double-sided pages, individually 4.25" x 3.25 and unfolded 1ft 10.75"
reverse side
back cover
Laurence Lagier, aoto, 2018
7 double-sided pages, individually 6" x 4.5", and unfolded 2ft 7.5"
reverse side
back cover
