Isidro Ferrer: Other people’s Book

The Museo Nivola is delighted to present the exhibition Isidro Ferrer: Other People’s Book, the Spanish illustrator and graphic designer’s first solo exhibition at an Italian institution.

Born in Madrid in 1963, Isidro Ferrer is a legend in the world of contemporary graphic design, creator of a style distinguished for powerful visuals, irony, and intelligent use of metaphor and typographical experimentation.

Ferrer’s images are created using an original, evocative method: starting from the designated theme, he creates sculptures in his studio using found objects, scrap metal and wood, and apparently insignificant items, assembling them to create unexpected and surprising forms.

At the crossroads between artisan experimentation, photographic practice, and digital reformulation, the objects and posters interact to create enigmatic images that, through a simple language, almost like a whisper that informs rather than imposes, stimulate the viewer’s sense of play and inspire reflection.

The exhibition at the Nivola Museum is divided into two sections. The first is a retrospective summary of his career presenting a selection of objects and illustrations that show Ferrer’s creativity and talent for exploring form and colour. The second focuses on the project that gave the exhibition its name, conceived specially for the Nivola Museum.

As observed by Luca Cheri, curator of the exhibition and director of the Nivola Museum, “Ferrer makes the book a palimpsest, de-territorialising it in order to inhabit it and transform it into a different object through overlapping drawings, which respectfully and sensitively integrate, transform, and enliven its pages.”

Isidro has paid homage to Costantino Nivola, working on the facsimile, published in a limited edition in 2009 by Electa, of the mock-up made by the Sardinian artist in the early 1960s for a book about his work that was never published, combining his own texts and designs for projects made in Italy and the United States.

“Isidro Ferrer”, observes Giuliana Altea, president of the Fondazione Nivola, “‘re-reads’ Nivola, filling the pages with a fantastical army of mythological creatures, talking animals, and enchanted landscapes. A magical forest that combines Sardinian and Andalusian folklore, in the spirit of a timeless modernity.” In the exhibition, these creatures leave the pages of the book to populate the old washhouse that is now used as the Nivola Museum’s temporary exhibition space. It is an imaginary meeting between Nivola and Ferrer, two artists who looked and look at the world with curious, penetrating eyes, overlapping everyday reality with a continuously developing poetic image world: “Before my first visit to Sardinia,” Isidro Ferrer recalls, “I already knew of Costantino Nivola, through Saul Steinberg’s long correspondence with Aldo Buzzi. In these letters, collected in a book called Lettere ad Aldo Buzzi, 1945–1999, Steinberg makes repeated reference to Nivola.

My admiration for the great Romanian-born illustrator led me to Nivola, but it was only with my first visit to Orani that I discovered the Sardinian artist’s work in its entirety, complexity, and brilliance. Work that immediately bewitched me.”

While Ferrer is in dialogue with Nivola, Paolo Angeli is in dialogue with both, through a soundscape that offers a metareading of the Iberian artist’s work. Angeli’s music expands Ferrer’s visual imaginary to a plurisensorial dimension.

The Nivola Museum in Orani is run by the Fondazione Costantino Nivola, a non-profit cultural institution devoted to the promotion of the artistic and personal legacy of Costantino Nivola, support for contemporary art in all forms, and the cultural and social development of central Sardinia. The museum, is home to the most important European collection of works by Costantino Nivola (Orani, 1911 – East Hampton, 1988), a graphic designer, art director, and sculptor committed to the integration of the visual arts and architecture and key figure in the cultural exchange between Italy and the United States in the twentieth century.

Institutional sponsors: Autonomous Region of Sardinia, City of Orani
Main sponsor: Fondazione di Sardegna
With support from: Biennale Barbagia, Distretto Culturale del Nuorese, Rete Ecoturismo Sardegna
Exhibition design: Alessandro Floris
Exhibition installation: Artigianato e Design di Pietro Fois
Graphics and Catalogue design: Heart Studio
We would like to thank the S’Isula ’e Campeda winery, Bosa