Georgia Russel « ORNÉ DE JOURS »

Description

In Georgia Russel's work, the book sculptures present themselves to the viewer as an unidentified object, an unknown hybrid thanks to the meticulous scalpel cutting. Books are dissected and then unfold into sculptural volumes.

The artist's wall work unfolds a play of colors, transparencies, spaces, and lights.

For Georgia Russel, cutting with a scalpel is the equivalent of a painter's brushstroke: cutting is akin to drawing. "Cutting is a form of freedom of expression. For me, it's like drawing, but here I draw with a scalpel."

Georgia Russell works with surgical precision, diverting the scalpel from its medical function to make it an artistic tool. To create her three-dimensional paper works, she meticulously cuts scores, drawings, newspapers, and photographs, sometimes even entire books, transforming conventional objects into fantastic works of art. She sources materials from flea markets or antique shops. Discarded and forgotten, these objects evoke a personal history, and the information they contain makes tangible eras long gone.

The artist sometimes spares certain parts, such as the spine of a book or the front page of a newspaper, turning them into connecting links between the past and the present and imbuing them with a second life and new meaning.

In this way, Georgia Russel creates spaces that resemble light ornaments and 17th-century Baroque paintings.

Georgia Russell was born in 1974 in Elgin, Scotland. In 2000, she graduated from the Royal College of Art in London with a master's degree in artistic printing techniques. This artist is already recognized, as evidenced by the numerous solo and group exhibitions dedicated to her by renowned international institutions, including "Slash: Paper under the Knife" at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, and "The Book Borrowers: Contemporary Artists Transforming the Book" at the Bellevue Arts Museum in Washington.

Some of her works are featured in prestigious private and public collections, including the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. She regularly exhibits at the Karsten Greve Gallery.

Georgia Russell lives and works in Méru, France.