Collage on paper
7 x 7 in.
M!DOR!
We met Tokyo-based collage artist M!DOR! while she was visiting Los Angeles for the Analog Outlaw festival earlier this year. Her collages are made from mid-century figures who have been removed from their original locations and placed into new surreal worlds of shape and vibrant color. She recently released two stunning new books of her work that celebrate over a decade of her practice.
In the Words of the Artist
Collage on paper
3.9 x 5.7 in.
My work primarily consists of hand-cut collages made from original magazines and printed materials dating from the 1800s to the 1950s. I was first drawn to collage after encountering Russian avant-garde posters, and Constructivism has remained a central influence in my practice. I have a strong affinity for geometry and shapes, which often appear in my compositions. In addition to two-dimensional works, I also create three-dimensional pieces, all made using antique materials.
I refer to my works as “the residents within me.” They feel like unseen parts of myself that are brought to life and transformed through collage. Through the motifs and colors of the materials I use, I visualize my current mood while simultaneously reconstructing my own identity.
Collage on paper
10.4 x 7 in.
I don’t set a fixed theme for each work; I create freely, and I want viewers to interpret them freely as well. When creating my works, I often listen to records, which has become a kind of ritual. The genre of music I choose during the process influences the atmosphere of the piece that emerges. In this way, the magic of sound itself also becomes collaged into the work.
I mainly source my materials from secondhand bookstores in Japan, as well as flea markets and antiquarian bookshops in Europe, collecting fashion magazines, encyclopedias, and ephemera.
Collage on paper
8.6 x 5 in.
Collage on paper
8 x 6.2
I am particularly influenced by Russian avant-garde and 1950s graphic design. I am also deeply inspired by the collage works of Jacques Prévert, Roman Cieślewicz, Hannah Höch, and Toshiko Okanoue. Digital and AI collages will likely continue to increase. However, I want to keep creating analog collages, valuing the sense of chance that can only arise through working by hand.
Collage on paper
8.1 x 5.2 in.
Collage on paper
9.4 x 8 in.
About the Artist
M!DOR! (b. 1986) is a Tokyo-based collage artist, graphic designer, and art director. A Bunka Women's University graduate, they create analog and digital collages from paper ephemera. Her clients include Grand Seiko, Tod's, Vogue Japan, and Harper's Bazaar.
For Your Viewing Pleasure
What to watch, read, and experience, as curated by the Collé team.
TEMPLETON ELLIOTT is a skateboarder and artist working out of Oregon. He creates intimate minimal moments through cut paper collage when he's not cutting the streets up on the board.
GARAGE COLLAGE is a Florence-based visual artist crafting surreal paper reveries since 2016, cutting fashion imagery and found photographs into dreamlike figures where bodies and objects merge.
BIRGER REHSE is a Berlin-based collage artist. He builds surreal, handmade compositions cut and assembled on paper, each one a unique piece. Selected works are offered as limited-edition prints on aluminum Dibond and art glass.
MAGDALENE BUSSE builds analog collages from found and vintage photographs, tearing and reassembling portraits so faces fracture and features slip, an intimate reckoning with identity, memory, and the instability of the image.
MARY MOLINA is a self-taught French collage artist who repurposes old photographs into new narratives. Fascinated by people and their untold stories, she treats collage as a poetic language, composing visual poems from fragments, images, and chance encounters.
Out and About
What to watch, read, and experience, as curated by the Collé team.
▼ READ
The Proving Ground by Coulter Fussell - Inventory Press
This catalogue accompanies the first museum survey of work by emerging Mississippi-based artist Coulter Fussell. Fussell’s “quilt-works” are multidimensional landscapes of the US South.
▼ READ
A Picasso Vanished in 1961. The Guggenheim Now Wants It Back
The museum is suing the current owners of “Femme dans un fauteuil” (1918), which resurfaced decades after it was stolen from the University of Pittsburgh.
▼ LISTEN
Transportation by Chandra
Chandra Oppenheim recorded Transportation in 1980 at just 10 years old, fronting a project built around her unfiltered juvenile perspective. Mutant disco, no wave, post-punk, and art rock, now reissued on Numero with the unreleased track "Shut In/Shut Out."
