Conversation | Raffaella della Olga on Typescripts at Clark Art Institute

A conversation with Italian-born, Paris-based artist Raffaella della Olga on her exhibition Typescripts, opening November 22 at the Clark Art Institute, with Clark curator and historian Robert Wiesenberger.

Raffaella della Olga (b. 1967, Bergamo; lives and works in Paris) uses modified typewriters and multicolor ink ribbons on various materials—including tracing paper, photo paper, and even sandpaper—to make unique artist’s books, each addressed to a different conceptual or technical problem. Seeking refuge from the wordiness of her former life as an attorney, and the chaos of shuttling between multiple languages, she modifies her machines to efface recognizable signs, producing instead an abstract language defined by form and color, texture and rhythm. Her manual interventions in the typewriter—smearing and dragging across the ink ribbon, inserting fabrics and carbon paper into the carriage—join the mechanical with the gestural and give her works extraordinary presence. Her bookworks are in the libraries of Bard College, the Clark, the Getty, Yale, and the Metropolitan Museum, among other major collections. Robert Wiesenberger, who has degrees from the University of Chicago and Columbia, is curator of contemporary projects at the Clark Art Institute and lecturer in the Williams Graduate Program in the History of Art, in Williamstown, MA. He has served as critic in the Yale School of Art’s MFA graphic design program, and his interests span modern and contemporary art, design, and architecture, with an emphasis on ecology and the more-than-human world.

The Typescripts exhibition catalog, designed and produced by Three Star Books in Paris and published by the Clark and Yale University Press, will be available for purchase and signing at the talk.

Registration

If you are a Grolier Club member, please register yourself and your guests via the Club website. Do not register via Eventbrite.

Support

We appreciate your interest in the Grolier Club’s programming on the art and history of the book. For over 130 years we have offered our exhibitions and lectures to the public, free of charge. If you have enjoyed these offerings, and would like to support that tradition, and help ensure that it continues, please consider making a tax-deductible donation to the Grolier Club.

Accessibility

An ADA-compliant lift from street level to the lobby is available to anyone with mobility issues. All desk staff should be ready and able to assist you in operating the lift, with or without advance notice.

A “T-Coil” assisted listening system is available to anyone attending a lecture in the Exhibition Hall. Visitors with hearing aids should turn their devices to the “T” setting in order to access the system; visitors without hearing aids may request a “loop receiver” with earphones.

Environment

The temperature and humidity in the exhibition hall are tightly controlled for the sake of the valuable items on display, and this may cause the room to feel chilly, particularly in warmer weather, to those coming in from outside. Members and visitors are advised to bring a light wrap when visiting an exhibition, or attending an event in the hall.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher The Grolier Club