Paper dioramas, papier-mâché sculptures

Ethel Ortiz and Dolores Gadler are two authors who make papier-mâché sculptures and paper dioramas created in collage or, as they like to define their work, “paintings with paper”.

…”Paper is a material that we have loved and used since we started our creative practice. Its properties lend themselves exactly to the kind of work we have in mind. IFurthermore, we love its dichotomies: it is pure and bold, it is simple and precious, it is colorless and colorful. Influenced by Ortiz’s anthropological background, through our work we pursue the personal passion for the fantastic and the bizarre that we find in cabinet de curiosités popular in the 1600s, 18th century entomology collections, classic fairy tales where Alice in Wonderland and Pinocchio are our favorite characters, and popular religious elements such as ex votos and memento mori.”…

The creations of “Ortiz Gadler” are the result of the process of deconstruction, construction and reconstruction.
They work with paper because it is simple and pure and at the same time it is a reflection of lives, images and thoughts.
Old books, magazine photographs, family letters and old postcards find new life in their creations made with the collage technique.
In their creative practice each element that makes up the collages loses its individual identity to become part of a new collective piece, which is then meticulously hand-cut into many pieces and reassembled layer upon layer.