Sylvain Bureau, Nope, Le Dernier Cri, Marseille, France, 2023, ed. 150

photo from Le Dernier Cri's website

Another wild silkscreen publication from Le Dernier Cri. Sylvain Bureau is a Belgium born comics and print artist based in Liege. While this is not an accordion, I have included it here for its play with the single and double-folded pages interspersed throughout the publication. When these are unfolded and opened up they create all sorts of interesting combinations of images, both front and back. Further, I like the way the publication forces you to engage and interact with it!

16 pages, and individually 12" x 8."

Frances Law, Island Landforms, collagraph/collage, 2023, and Dark Sun, monoprint/collage, 2024

Two really gorgeous accordions from Frances Law, an artist who lives on the edge of the Scottish Highlands outside of Dundee. This location deeply informs her practice, of which she writes: 

"My current work explores the archaeological and mythic undercurrents of the landscape where I live and travel to in Scotland. Walking in the landscape and connecting to ancestral voices through maps, stories and language, I work with drawing, print-making and collage overlaying textures, symbols and universal imagery in an attempt to understand the spiritual relationship between people, the land and nature".  About her more recent work she writes "My focus has grown and evolved from the observation of the small intimate workings of nature into an exploration of our relationship to place, and the narratives deeply embodied within the landscape".

These two works really pulse with an awe, a dignity and a respect for the natural world, coupled with the fact that they are one-of-a-kind hand-made objects, which lends them a special intimacy upon encountering and handling them.

More of Law's work can be seen here: Home - Frances Law

Front Cover: Island Landforms, 2023

8 single-sided pages, individually 3" x 2.75", and when fully open 1ft 10"

_____________________________________________________________

Front Cover: Dark Sun, 2024

8 single-sided pages, individually 6" x 2.75", and when fully open 1ft 10"

Felipe Ehrenberg, Codex Aeroscriptus Ehrenbergensis, [2 versions] Nexus Press, Atlanta, 1990, ed. 40 & 500

I only recently discovered this really impressive accordion by the wonderful experimental Mexican artist Felipe Ehrenberg (1943-2017). This publication with its nine two-page stencil works, and pages of varying sizes, is really a mini-retrospective of his explorations in this medium — indeed the artist comments in the bilingual brochure accompanying the work, "For this book (which, like many other codices, should ideally be read like a detective novel) I have laid out my best beloved stencils. With these I seek to offer viewers various clues that you may unravel the wondrous and dramatic events surrounding the life of this artist, another witness to the end of a century." Further, he writes, "This work is also intended to serve as a musical score, perhaps to be composed by someone wishing to recreate the background music of our daily histories. The cutting of a paper stencil is like the soldering of a golden filligree." 

This work came out of a residency Ehrenberg completed at Atlanta's Nexus Press. The images for the works came from what he called his Visual Information Bank which was a box with all sorts of ephemera that he would dip into for images for his stencils. In contrast to the frenetic energy of the stencils, the inside of the publication has a bucolic and calm feeling that is mirrored in the original stencil work Ehrenberg created across the front pages of each book.

18 double-sided pages, individually 17" x 17"(variable), and when fully opened approximately 72".

At the bottom of this post I'm including some images of a non-accordion version of the publication that reproduces the same sequence of two-page stencils. Published in 1990, the same year as the accordion version, this publication is slightly smaller in size at 17" x 11" and printed in an edition of 500.

on the ends of the pages Ehrenberg has created an original stencil work 

(the palm tree & seascape)

the work's bilingual guide on the left with signature & edition number.

_____________________________________________________________

Sol LeWitt, Black Gouaches, Galerie Digital Arts and Les Nouvelles Editions Séguier, Paris, 1992, ed. 1000

This accordion by LeWitt (1928-2007) is not in his typical minimalist style with some strict ordering principle that defines how the finished piece unfolds. This work would seem to be in direct opposition to that — a long line of shapeless black blobs strewn together with no seemingly obvious intention or meaning. And even though I've searched hard I have found no writings about this work at all - which makes it even more mysterious to me. So, dear reader I leave it up to you to make sense of this rather elegant work, and if you come across any tasty tidbits please let me know!

15 double-sided pages, individually 14" x 11.5", and when fully extended 14ft 4.5"

accordion with slipcover

statement on inside of back cover

Jules Gabillet, Simon Moussiere, Erwan LeGueval and Valentin Fleuret, Untitled, Rennes, 2022

In one of my recent posts I posted documentation of a cool accordion exhibition that I co-curated with my French colleague Marie Boivent in the exhibition space of the Artists' Book collection at the University of Rennes. It was also an historic exhibition as it was the first exhibition in France of accordions, or as the French prefer 'leporellos'.

In the brief time that I was in Rennes I addressed Marie's students a couple of times and was pleased to see a good number of them at the opening, as well as their attendance at the one-day conference the following day. This leporello, which was gifted to me, is a collaboration between four student artists around the theme of Vincent van Gogh's "The Starry Night" (1889) with texts on the reverse side that all amplify the theme of dark and light, and the swirling stars glistening in the sky above the village below. This is a fun publication with a well defined purpose that provides both a visual and textual response to this iconic painting.

6 double-sided pages, individually 3.75" x 2.75", and when unfolded with covers 1ft 10".