What makes Nicky Dollar run / Collections

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:

Part 1: The story of WHAT MAKES NICKY DOLLAR RUN (documents and forensic evidence), composed of :
a. 12 page document entitled “NICKY DOLLAR’S DOLLS”: phototext in the form of a magazine layout
b. victims and forensic evidence: sculptures, objects, photos

The text is a series of press clippings devoted to the discovery of the mutilated, yet artistically arranged bodies of “the dolls”depicted in a series of photos. Leaked to the the newspapers and TV under shadowy circumstances, the photos leave one feeling that the killer was seeking to perform a creative act through these killings:

The first photo, widely circulated through the written and televised press, was received with shock by a public totally unprepared to witness death so dramatically staged. What to think of this circle composition made up of body parts? At that stage, we weren’t yet sure, given the somewhat blurry and underexposed quality of the photos, if these really were “the dolls” as they had come to be known in the art world and by the citizens of S- who had been their neighbors,. A whole series of photos would follow: the ‘dolls’ documented in elaborate poses of torture, their bodies hacked to pieces. The quality of the photography could be seen to improve. .Even more disturbing were the carefully rendered paintings of these gisants. For each one of the dolls, multiple killings had been staged and depicted, leaving police unsure as to the real cuase of their demise. Was this murder as an act of art?

The obvious suspect seems to be Nicky Dollar, gallery owner and collector of “the dolls”, despite -or perhaps because of- her public displays of grief:

(…) Nicky Dollar is an obsessive collector. To see it is to want it. To want is to have, to extoll, and inevitably to grow bored with it once the next acquisition presents itself. This of course demands a lot of money. (…) She believes that anyone and anything can be bought, will even willingly deliver themselves. It’s all a question of angle. This aspect of her personality isn’t known to many, but the dolls had certainly tasted it in their shared lives so recently and unexpectedly terminated.

“The dolls” who are the victims of these crimes, are ceramic figures who have been broken to pieces. The phototext presents each one of them both as artwork and living being, and tells us how Nicky came into each of their ‘lives’:

KENNETH owed his existence to misplaced sentiments. He was born of the impulse to prove something to a woman in no way capable of seeing much less caring about so fatuous a thing as a work of art (created in her honor, no less). The lady in question had first felt puzzled and just as quickly bored with her present. It had only inspired her to think she must have appeared too attentive to its donor when he came in to have his teeth cleaned the week before, and that her boyfriend (a real estate broker) wouldn’t like seeing her with this token of appreciation from another man.
Ken’s creator had imagined he would elevate the young woman’s spirit, rescuing her from her normal dismal concerns through contact with this object of neo-classical inspiration. Fortunately, he’d had the good sense to not insist on her keeping the piece.
And so Kenneth went on to a modest career as an actor in a local S- repertory company until he was purchased by one of Nicky’s agents.

Part 2: COLLECTIONS
The second part of the installation is entitled “COLLECTIONS” and occupies the two other rooms of the exhibition space of the Espace Paul Ricard. Representing the current exhibition at the Nicky Dollar Gallery, the show is advertized on the back page of the magazine “NICKY DOLLAR’S DOLLS” . Here the artist presents extracts from different series in glazed earthenware or in paint on a variety of surfaces.