Zoe Beloff, Parade of the Old New, self-published, 2019

This is a substantial accordion at 19ft long, and it takes it's title from a 1938 poem of the same name by Bertolt Brecht. I'll let Beloff describe what she was trying to do with this sharp political and historical work:

"...now more than ever, we are not finished with the past and the past is not finished with us. The project was launched with Trump's inauguration and continued until he was defeated at the ballot box. It begins with the president's triumphal entry into Washington DC. Beyond stretches a country where the Mexican border wall meets Japanese internment camps from the 1940s at a vanishing point. It chronicles the desecration of public lands for profit, the battle of Charlottesville, the arrest of undocumented workers across the country and the detention of asylum seekers at the border. It illustrates the toll of COVID 19, the work of the nurses, the breadlines, young people painting "Black Lives Matter" mapping a road ahead, the storming of the Capitol and finally the flickering light of what might be a new beginning." [zoebeloff.com]

On the reverse side is a long essay exploring the themes in this work, and Beloff covers a lot of ground both artistically and historically, and she brings us up to the controversies of the contemporary moment. This is a substantial work and it's heartwarming to come across such an ambitious accordion that takes such a sweeping look at how we got to be where we are, and the seeds of hope for a better future.

38 double-sided pages, individual 9" x 6", and when fully open 19'.

reverse side with essay

back cover

Alfonso Barrera, Random Spleen, Polvoh Press, Oaxaca, Mexico, 2019, ed. 14

I'm unable to find any information about what this curious little publication is all about! Berrera started Polvoh Press in 2014 and they are "...a multi-graphic publishing project that brings together printed publications in the following techniques: screen printing, lithography, offset, risography, movable type and digital printing. All editions are limited, independent and made in Oaxaca. Our goal is to publicize our personal work and local artists."

Just for the record here's a description of the spleen and what it does: The spleen plays multiple supporting roles in the body. It acts as a filter for blood as part of the immune systems. Old red blood cells are recycled in the spleen, and platelets and white bloods cells are stored there. The spleen also helps fight certain kinds of bacteria that cause pneumonia and meningitis. 

8 double-sided pages, individual pages 6.25" x 6.25", and when opened up 4' 2".

reverse with gold ink

back cover

Pyrex, 8 cup Carafe with candle, publicity brochure, c. 1959

A wonderful little accordion brochure that came with some Pyrex ware that I acquired a little while ago. I must admit I didn't give this piece of publicity a second glance, since I was much more enamored by the carafe! So a big thank you to Lillian Sizemore for retrieving this from the trash and saving it for when I would finally appreciate it!!

A photograph of the 8 cup Carafe with candle is at the end of this post.

5 double-sided pages, each 3.25" x 3.25", when open 1' x 4.25".

8 cup Carafe with candle

Görüş Hakkı, Panorama (The Right of View), Andreas Fogarasi and Sputnik Editions, Milan, 2013, ed. 500

cover with the Panorama in foreground

This accordion is the documentation for an ambitious project that was a large-scale text-based temporary installation, originally sited on one side of the Bosporous in Istanbul (2010), and then moved to the other side (2011), as seen in the above photograph. In the background skyline of this photograph is the medieval conical tower known as the Galata Tower. This tower is well-known for its panoramic view of the city and the Bosporous (see vintage panoramic photo below). Görüş' installation was a large circle of texts imprinted on a continuous panel. You climbed a short stairway to engage with the work, and to read the many texts, interspersed with cut-outs that allowed visitors to see through the work and to different "views" of the city behind it. 

This accordion reproduces all the texts in the work, and collectively they relate both literally and metaphorically, around the idea of "views," and while the texts tackle a wide range of subjects their central core is Istanbul itself. This accordion is like a panorama of the city, and an observation deck from which to get a sense of the long sweep of the city's history.

26 single-sided pages, 5.75" x 8", when fully open 12' 5".

photographs looking up into the work

back cover (the installation is at bottom left)

Basile Kargopoulo (1826-86), "Panorama of Constantinople," c. 1870s

detail "Panorama of Constantinople," c. 1870s

detail "Panorama of Constantinople," c. 1870s

Nick Mauss, Treatise on the Veil, Museum Ludwig, Köln, 2019

This accordion, with its perforated pages, reproduces a series of works that Mauss brought together in his installation as part of the Transcorporealities exhibition that took place the at Museum Ludwig, Cologne, between Sept., 1 2019 - Jan., 19, 2020.

In the statement that accompanies this accordion Mauss writes that he brought these disparate works together in order to create a "...momentary Zusammenhang of artworks that confound representations of the body, the utterance, and the event. Guided not so much by preference or affinity as by surprise, disagreement, and the slow elaboration of delayed consonances. I staged these paintings, sculptures, collages and photographs—and the strong charge between them—as protagonists in a new work."  This certainly explains the disparate imagery contained in this accordion, however, my sense is that it 'read' better when installed in a room where you could move around and appreciate the different dimensions of the works, and the varied ways in which they engaged with each other. Something is lost in its translation to the accordion format and it feels like a string of disconnected works without any strong formal or thematic connections.

14 double-sided pages with a floating page where the two printed sections are stapled together, individual pages 4.25" x 5.75", and when fully opened with a 2 page cover: 4' 11.5".

reverse side with credits for the works on the other side

back cover

LL'Editions: The Leporello Series, #1: Heimo Zobering, #2: Micah Lexier, #3: Fiona Banner, #4: Ryan Gander, 2021- , Gothenburg, Sweden

The Leporello Series is a new series of accordion artists' accordion books, published by LL'Editions. Inhabiting a space between book and paper sculpture, the leporellos are printed on delicate Mohawk Eggshell paper. Each volume in the series is limited to 250 numbered copies and come in a bespoke rigid box, with the title hot foiled both on its front and on its spine, allowing it to sit comfortably in a bookshelf when not on display.

For The Leporello Series, ll'Editions has invited a select group of international artists to contribute. Each artist is given carte blanche, restricted only by the accordion format and its ten panels (recto).  [LL'Editions statement]

Leporello #1, Heimo Zobernig, 2021

10 single-sided pages, individual pages 5.5" x 4", when opened 3' 4"

As with all the leporellos from the LL'Editions series the presentation is really excellent. The care taken in the creation of this 'bespoke' box, and its role as a holder and protector of the work is first class, and it feels nice to hold!

Heimo Zobernig (b. 1958) is an Austrian artist who is a Professor of Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Working across a range of media, books and printed matter have constituted a large part of his oeuvre since 1980. As can be seen with this work his material is language itself, and this piece explores this through the visual and verbal play between a minimum of words.

All the accordions in this series are held safely inside their respective boxes

 through a smartly designed interior.

front cover

back cover

Leporello #2, Micah Lexier, 2021

10 double-sided pages, individual pages 5.5" x 4", when opened 3' 4"

Micah Lexier is a Canadian artist currently living in New York. I'm going to excerpt below the excellent introduction to this work from the ll'Editions website:

"A number of years ago Micah Lexier purchased a small paperback publication about the game of dominoes. The very end of the book consisted of a series of pages that reproduced a complete set of twenty-eight domino tiles. The images were printed on right-hand pages, four to a page, while the left-hand pages were blank. The idea was that you were supposed to cut these images out of the book and glue them to empty matchboxes to create your own do-it-yourself set. That sequence of pages, combined with the quality of their reproductions, was the inspiration for Lexier's leporello. To that, he added two favourite print techniques - perforations and die-cut holes - to create a set of ten domino tiles. Lexier chose the denomination of each tile and its order in the leporello so that none of the thirty-four die-cut holes line up with each other, allowing each hole to be misread as a printed white domino dot."

front cover

reverse side

back cover

Leporello #3, Fiona Banner, 2021

10 single-sided pages, individual pages 5.5" x 4", when opened 3' 4"

In 2009 Fiona Banner completed a work titled "Portrait of an Alphabet," in which she photographed herself in a photo booth holding up large sheets of paper, each with individual letters of the alphabet. This work is a reworking of that work, and every now and then you can see a hand holding the edge of the sheet and the spell is broken.  ll'Editions suggests "the work can be seen as a form of self-portrait. A portrait of the artist as a typeface."

front cover

Leporello #4, Ryan Gander, 2021

10 single-sided pages, with magnifying sheet, individual pages 5.5" x 4", when opened 3' 4"

Once you start 'reading' this text it quickly becomes clear that its a non-narrative text that represents selections from Granger's work Staccato Refractions (2020). The publishers' website states, "Presented as concrete poetry, the prose reveals intentional glitches, making the reader question the nature of the narrative. Man or machine? Is the text, or parts of it, a message transmitted by a computer, or perhaps an example of distributed thinking?

The text is rendered in minuscule typography, transforming it to shape and form. For its transcription, the use of an included magnifying sheet is necessary. In the background, a pale sequence detailing the moon's movement is rendered. Once the lights are dimmed, the moon starts to glow, moving from subordinate to superior." [https://lleditions.se/product/leporello-no-04-ryan-gander/]