This October, 'Slash: Paper Under
the Kinfe' Showcases Work by over 50 Artists Who Cut, Burn, tear and
Shread Paper to Create Compelling Sculpture, Installation, and Video
Special Visitor Preview, Starting October 7, Invites Public
to Watch Artists Install Site-Specific Works in Galleries and in MAD’s
Lobby
On View Through April 4, 2010, Exhibition Features Works by
Contemporary Artists Thomas Demand, Olafur Eliasson, Tom Friedman and
Kara Walker, Among Others
New York, NY (September 14, 2009) – Slash: Paper Under the Knife
explores the international phenomenon of cut paper in contemporary art—showcasing
the work of artists who reach beyond the traditional role of paper as
a neutral surface to consider its potential as a medium for provocative,
expressive, and visually striking sculpture, installation, and video
animation. Organized by the Museum of Arts and Design, Slash features
12 new site-specific installations and other new and recent work by
over 50 contemporary artists from around the world, including Thomas
Demand, Olafur Eliasson, Tom Friedman, Nina Katchadourian, Judy Pfaff,
and Kara Walker, among others.
A special weeklong Visitor Preview of Slash, starting October 7, will
invite museum visitors to watch the creative process as six Slash artists
install their site-specific installations during regular museum hours.
Andreas Kocks, Celio Braga, Michael Velliquette, Tomas Rivas, and Mark
Fox will install and assemble their new commissions in the Museum’s
4th and 5th floor galleries. Andrea Mastrovito will hang his massive
paper installation, depicting a storm seizing Christopher Columbus’s
ship, from the ceiling of MAD’s lobby, visible to all visitors
passing through the Museum and from the street.
The completed exhibition will be on view from October 14, 2009 through
April 4, 2010. A Press Preview with participating artists and museum
leadership will be held on Thursday, October 8, from 10:00am to 12:00noon.
“Whether it be through our open studio programs or our digital
interactives, our focus at the Museum of Arts and Design is on connecting
artists and our audiences in new ways,” said Holly Hotchner, the
museum’s Nanette L. Laitman Director. “This special Visitor
Preview of Slash invites the public to watch these visionary artists
as they install their work, a process that is usually kept behind the
scenes. We hope this special viewing will provide our visitors with
a new appreciation for the creative process and will help bring to life
the works on view.”
Organized by the Museum’s Chief Curator, David Revere McFadden,
Slash is the third exhibition in MAD's Materials and Process series,
which examines the renaissance of traditional handcraft materials and
techniques in contemporary art and design. Previous installments in
the series include Radical Lace and Subversive Knitting (2007) and Pricked:
Extreme Embroidery (2008). Slash: Paper under the Knife is made possible
by Kate’s Paperie. Generous additional support is provided by
the Angelica Berrie Foundation.
Slash presents a range of subjects that artists across the world are
exploring through cut paper, such as landscape, the human body, architecture,
politics, and language. The processes and techniques used in these investigations
include burning, tearing, perforating, and shredding paper as well as
cutting with knives, scissors, and lasers. Some artists work slowly,
cutting intricate designs with painstaking patience, while others slash
and crumple with performative energy.
“Looking at traditional mediums and techniques through the lens
of contemporary art, Slash showcases artists whose works surprise for
their complexity and content, and not just for their technical virtuosity,”
states McFadden. “Slash takes the pulse of the international art
world's renewed interest in paper as a creative medium and source of
artistic inspiration. The exhibition places this phenomenon in a global
context, including work by artists from 16 countries and representing
five continents.”
“Kate’s Paperie is delighted to support the Museum of Arts
and Design’s exhibition?a remarkable presentation of works solely
made out of paper," said Angelica Berrie, owner of Kate’s
Paperie and President of The Russell Berrie Foundation. "As a company
that strives to continuously encourage innovation, creativity and artistry,
Kate’s Paperie’s support of the Museum and this exhibition
is a natural partnership."
Exhibition Highlights
Organized thematically, Slash examines how paper can inspire new investigation
into concepts that have long concerned artists from around the world,
ranging from explorations of the human condition to the nature of three-dimensional
space. The exhibition will include the following eight groupings:
Cutting as Gesture: Drawing with the Knife
The majority of artists in this section come to paper after working
in painting, drawing, and engraving and have seized upon paper cutting
as a means of making drawings three-dimensional. Featured artists include:
• German artist Andreas Kocks, who will install his site-specific
work during the Visitor Preview week, a massive explosion of black paper
that captures the dynamism of wet paint thrown violently against a wall;
• Adam Fowler of New York, who is represented by a complex three-dimensional
drawing consisting of dozens of individual sheets of paper from which
all the ground has been cut away, preserving only the drawn lines.
Cutting as Topography: Exploring Landscape
Several artists in Slash use cut and altered paper to explore landscapes,
both real and imagined. These works propose surprising and fictitious
places, alter and distort maps to eradicate function,
or create otherworldly three-dimensional geographies. Featured artists
include;
• British artist Chris Kenny, who has created a new, fictional
city, from deconstructed maps;
• French-born artist Beatrice Coron, who presents her ambitious
vistas of Heavens and Hells, which she created on-site during a three-week
residence in MAD’s Open Studios this past June.
Structure and Space: Slicing Architecture
Paper has long been used to make models and architectural maquettes.
This section features works that explore new possibilities in the interrelationship
between flat paper, three-dimensional space, and the built environment.
Featured artists include:
• Olafur Eliasson, whose limited-edition book Your House is a
laser-cut negative impression of Eliasson’s own house in Copenhagen,
Denmark. As readers leaf through the pages, they slowly make their way
through the rooms of the house from front to back.
• Tomás Rivas, from Chile, who carves ordinary sheetrock
into classical architectural ornaments and trim. For Slash, he has created
his most ambitious piece: a rendering of Baroque artist Andrea Pozzo’s
dramatic trompe l’oeil Apotheosis of St. Ignatius, painted on
the ceiling of Sant’Ignazio church in Rome.
• German artist Thomas Demand builds highly realistic full-scale
environments of cut and folded paper objects which he then photographs.
The model of his environment is destroyed and only the large-scale photographic
print remains as the final document.
Corporeal Concerns: Revealing the Body
Many artists have used paper as a metaphor for the skin that covers
the human body. Featured artists include:
• German-born artist Oliver Herring, who has created a life-size,
3-D portrait of a friend constructed of hundreds of close-up photographic
images of his subject’s body; these are printed and cut into small
fragments and painstakingly reassembled over a three-dimensional body.
Dissecting the Past: Myths and Memories
Artists in this grouping invoke the primary use of paper as a record
of our histories, thoughts, concerns, and aspirations. Featured artists
include:
• American artist Nava Lubelski, who shreds personal documents—letters,
receipts, ticket stubs, Post-It notes—and rolls them into small
bundles that resemble the cross-sections of a tree. For Slash, Lubelski,
has created a new work called Crush, made of five years worth of personal
documentation of an individual’s “coming out” as a
gay man;
• Brazilian-born Célio Braga, who will assemble his site-specific
installation during the Visitor Preview week, has created a floor-to-ceiling
wall of memorial wreaths and garlands comprised of thousands of small
flowers cut from the instructions that have accompanied the prescription
drugs used by the artist’s family and friends. The work is a poignant
tribute to all of the illnesses—from hay fever to AIDS—that
have intersected with the artist’s life.
Shredding the Word: Books and Language
The artists in this section respond to paper as a carrier of the written
word, using their knives and scissors to modify, subvert, or celebrate
the text printed on a page. Featured artists include:
• Scottish artist Georgia Russell, who presents a shredded Gombrich’s
The Story of Art, flaying its pages and preserving it under a glass
bubble, like a taxidermy specimen.
• British artist Su Blackwell, who elicits childhood memories
of favorite readings, as she cuts up old books, turning them into delicate
and fragile three-dimensional dreamscapes. For Slash, Blackwell has
transformed the pages of Darwin’s The Origin of Species.
Culture Clashes: Politics on the Edge
Several of the artists in Slash make use of their chosen medium to express
their political views. Provocative and powerful, paper serves as the
voice for personal concerns and aspirations.
Featured artists include:
• Pietro Ruffo, who addresses the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
in his work Youth of the Hills, modeled on a military tank and covered
with Hebrew prayers cut in the form of desert beetles.
• American artist Ariana Boussard-Reifel, who undermines the text
of a white supremacist manual by cutting out every single word and turning
the book into a heap of meaningless letters.
The Moving Image: Paper and Action
A special feature of Slash is a series of animated films that use paper
silhouettes and stop-action photography. Featured artists include:
• British artist Rob Carter’s work employs video animation
and photographic ‘re-constructions’ that exploit the theatricality
of architecture and landscape. He has created a film about the building
of The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine for Slash, showing the
structure’s physical evolution over time.
PUBLIC PROGRAMS
In conjunction with the exhibition, the Museum will organize artist
demonstrations in its Open Studios, residences, workshops, lectures,
and screenings of videos of artist’s at work, as well as programs
for children and families. Programs include:
• Gallery Night with the Artists on October 15, an evening of
personal tours of the exhibition given by Chief Curator David McFadden
and artists whose work is featured in Slash
• An afternoon of artist interaction in the Open Studios, October
17, where Slash artist Mia Perlman demonstrates her techniques as she
transforms ordinary paper into inspiring cloud-like sculptures, October
17
• A screening of Lotte Reiniger’s 1926 cut animation classic
film, The Adventures of Prince Achmed, on October 29, presented with
live music by Donald Sosin
• An afternoon of hands-on creativity in the Museum’s classroom
with a Mexican Day of the Dead celebration on October 31.
Many programs will be made available on-line as well as on-site.
EXHIBITION ORGANIZATION AND CREDITS
Slash: Paper under the Knife is made possible by Kate’s Paperie.
Generous additional support is provided by the Angelica Berrie Foundation.
CATALOGUE
Slash: Paper Under the Knife will be accompanied by a fully illustrated
publication that includes a foreword by Museum Director Holly Hotchner
and an essay by David Revere McFadden, the exhibition’s organizing
curator. The essay examines the international renaissance of interest
in cut paper as an art form today, and the work of over 50 artists from
North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. Color images of
works by each artist, and artists’ biographies and statements
will be included. The volume is published and distributed internationally
by 5 Continents Editions in Italy.
ABOUT KATE’S PAPERIE
For over 20 years, Kate's Paperie has been a resource for beautiful
papers from around the world providing customers with creative inspiration
and the tools to bring their ideas to life. Kate’s Paperie stocks
over 4,000 papers from more than 40 countries, and other related items
including gift wrap, journals, artisanal greeting cards, desk accessories,
photo albums, frames, boxed stationery, and a selection of over 1,500
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Kate’s Paperie’s handmade boxes can be created from nearly
any of the papers carried in the store and most of the products carried
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products and services are available worldwide through KatesPaperie.com
in addition to five retail locations; four in New York City and one
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ABOUT THE MUSEUM OF ARTS AND DESIGN
The Museum of Arts and Design explores how craftsmanship, art, and design
intersect in the visual arts today. The Museum focuses on contemporary
creativity and the ways in which artists and designers from around the
world transform materials through processes ranging from the handmade
to cutting edge technologies.
The Museum’s exhibition program explores and illuminates issues
and ideas, highlights creativity and craftsmanship, and celebrates the
limitless potential of materials and techniques when used by creative
and innovative artists. MAD’s permanent collection is global in
scope and focuses on art, craft, and design from 1950 to the present
day.
At the center of the Museum’s mission is education. The Museum’s
dynamic new facility features classrooms and studios for master classes,
seminars, and workshops for students, families and adults. Three open
artist studios engage visitors in the creative processes of artists
at work and enhance the exhibition programs. Lectures, films, performances
and symposia related to the Museum’s collection and topical subjects
affecting the world of contemporary art, craft and design are held in
a renovated 150-seat auditorium.
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