[Virtual] Conversation | Raffaella della Olga on Typescripts

Image: Raffaella della Olga, T40, 2023. Typewritten with carbon paper and ink ribbon on copy paper and tracing paper, with PVC cover, 16 ½ x 11 ¾ x in. (42 x 29.7 cm). Clark Art Institute Library, NF623.O455.8t

Italian-born, Paris-based artist Raffaella della Olga will speak with Clark Art Institute curator and historian Robert Wiesenberger about her works on view in the exhibition "Typescripts" opening Nov. 22.

Raffaella della Olga (b. 1967) 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. Della Olga’s 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.

Della Olga’s unique bookworks are collected by the libraries of Bard College, the Clark, the Getty, Yale, and the Metropolitan Museum, among other institutions. Robert Wiesenberger is curator of contemporary projects at the Clark Art Institute and lecturer in the Williams Graduate Program in the History of Art, both in Williamstown, MA.

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

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