Éric Nado

Operating Instructions 1

2018

Since 1999, Éric Nado has been exploring urban relics, collecting industrial pieces, and making contemporary sculptures. His artwork pays tribute to a collective industrial past and exudes and inspires, a sense of nostalgia. A Bachelor of Philosophy and of Visual Arts, Éric Nado started his career in Montreal, Canada and was one of the first tenants and administrators of the Lézarts Co-op, the city’s first visual arts housing, and workshop cooperative, before moving his family and workshop to Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, in 2007. Through sculpture-assemblage, Éric Nado transforms and reorganizes certain objects to reveal other possibilities through their forms or intended functions. Using iconic metal objects such as typewriters and sewing machines, Nado materializes concepts such as labor and memory. Filled with nostalgia, the objects he transforms into sculptures tell compelling stories. Reconstructive Series Typewriter Guns - "Mitra-Lettres” Olivetti, Underwood and other vintage brands of typewriting machines are transformed into evocative Typewriter Guns by reassembling every piece of the original machines. The series triggers the idea that words are stronger than arms and shape history. Process – Artist Statement There has always been a common thread to Nado’s work, the storytelling of our collective past through nostalgia-imprinted sculptures and assemblies. From scraps of industrial machinery, recycled and salvaged from various urban spaces, Éric Nado’s original approach was to create robot-looking figures inspired by the Czech etymology of the word “robota”, literally meaning “forced work”. Around these characters that recall the working class, a visual presentation was set up as an attempt to bring to life and materialize the notion of work. For close to ten years, Nado was successful at humanizing these machine-inspired figures, the Humanonyme Series, and at suggesting an interpretation to the collective fiber they come from and stand for. Urban exploration and the quest to tell stories of the past through sculpture-assembly has remained an intricate part of the artist’s creative process. From the relics of our past, Nado creates imposing tribute pieces that inspire a sense of nostalgia. In moving to Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, home to the Singer Factory and to the Canadian Military, his work evolved to add two conceptually strong art series to his portfolio: “The Seamstress” and the “Typewriter Guns”. The reconstructive sculptures of the Seamstress is an ongoing series and evokes the strength of feminism, the working talents of women and the collective memories of a simpler past. The Typewriter Guns, or "Mitra-Lettres”, are figurative works made from the deconstruction and reconstruction of typewriters and refers to the undeniable force of words throughout time