François Righi:
Kopis, ou la Séparation des Songes
Epigraph: Werner Herzog, Aguirre, or the Wrath of God , 1972. “I want it to be known that anyone who thinks of deserting will be cut by me into ninety-eight pieces. And we will trample all those pieces until what remains is only good for painting walls…”
The origin of this book project lies in The Enigma of Separation, a piece created as part of my Similitudes series in 1990: four paintings on glass, accompanied by a display case containing an accumulation of shredded peacock feather barbs. The four paintings under glass reproduced , in gouache, as well as in gold and dragon’s blood powder, one of the illustrations from a 16th – century German alchemical treatise, the famous Splendor Solis by Salomon Trismosin.
At the time, I was inspired by the French edition of this grimoire, entitled La Toyson d’or ou La Fleur des Trésors, which features a strange scene of dismemberment. Many years later, I discovered in the Strasbourg library a German manuscript, made in the 18th century, of the treatise from which La Toyson d’or was translated into French; this find, which I owe to Agathe Bischoff-Moralès, chief curator of the heritage collection at the Strasbourg library, reignited my research.
[Ivoy le pré], LLSM [Les livres sont muets], 2017. Octavo (15 x 11.8 cm), 34 pp. Illustrated folder (photogravure printed in intaglio on Kawasaki Japanese paper by Parme Baratier), black cloth slipcase. 19 relief engravings on poly, texts and images, printed by the artist. 46 copies on Kozo Usukuchi Japanese paper, numbered and signed. No. 1 is accompanied by 36 original drawings (Strasbourg Municipal Library), no. 2 by the 19 engraved plates (Caen Municipal Library).
1 in stock