The Leporello Series, published by ll’Editions, presents a series of artist’s books by a group of select international artists. Each artist is given carte blanche, restricted only by the accordion format and its ten panels (recto).
For the first volume in The Leporello Series, Vienna based artist Heimo Zobernig (b. 1958) makes optimal use of the accordion format, allowing rhythmic wording and typography seamlessly transcend from individual words and phrases to shapes and structure. Repetition plays an integral role as the borders between the conjoined pages blur.
The second volume features the Toronto based artist Micah Lexier (b. 1960). A number of years ago 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.
The third volume features London based artist Fiona Banner aka The Vanity Press (b. 1966). She does not waste words in BAD REVIEW. Both deadpan and playful, Banner's Leporello N° 03 uses images from her work Portrait of an Alphabet, 2009; a series of images made in a photo booth, reconfigured to read Bad Review. The sudden flash disrupts the notion of privacy behind the curtain in the narrow booth, only just large enough to fit a small chair. The artist is shielded by the large scale typographic print-outs she holds up. Only slight details; a glitch here and parts of a hand there, reveals the process behind the work. For Banner, often incorporating language and text in her work, the work can be seen as a form of self-portrait. A portrait of the artist as a typeface.
The books in the series and their packaging are all designed and produced by Lundgren+Lindqvist. Inhabiting a space between a book and a paper sculpture, the leporellos are printed on delicate 170g/m2 Mohawk Superfine 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. The seemingly simple interior of the rigid box is actually rather complex in its design. It is composed of two separate pieces of black board, which are die-cut and folded together allowing the book to sit securely in its center.
