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Featuring Melanie Baker, Terry Berkowitz, Claudia Bitran, François Bucher, Richard Galpin, MK Guth, Malia Jensen, Alois Kronschlaeger, Joan Linder, Jennifer Marman and Daniel Borins, T. Kelly Mason, Dread Scott, Jorge Tacla, Francisco Ugarte, Jeff Wallace, John Wood and Paul Harrison, and Tim Youd
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Blurring the Lines
Richard Galpin, Malia Jensen, Jennifer Marman and Daniel Borins, T. Kelly MasonSome of the artists in PAPER use the material to blur the distinctions between different media. In Malia Jensen's sculpture Debark, a bundle tied to a stick is revealed to be an illusion: the cloth is actually made with cast paper, rendering it unable to hold anything, and the six-foot stick is bronze, making it too heavy to carry. Paper is also a tool of subversion for Jennifer Marman and Daniel Borins, who use it to create "paintings" resembling Abstract Expressionist masterpieces, but with shredded archival paper in an acrylic box. T. Kelly Mason sculpts paper into a mobiles used for the set design of his 2019 sci-fi road movie Space Film. Richard Galpin cuts and excises layers of photographs to create new abstract compositions with painterly effect.
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Experiments in Force and (E)Motion
Terry Berkowitz, Claudia Bitran, Jorge Tacla, John Wood and Paul HarrisonA variety of artists employ paper in the service of video and animation. In 500 Thoughts by John Wood and Paul Harrison, the duo crumples one sheet of paper after another from a ream of 500 sheets, symbolizing ideas they’ve thrown out. Destruction similarly provides a through line for Jorge Tacla, who burns his notebooks and papers in Informe de Lesiones. Terry Berkowitz’s short video Notebook of the Plague documents the artist’s ongoing effort to physically tally each death from Covid-19. Another approach is seen in Claudia Bitran’s Falling, in which animations of children and animals falling down--modeled after videos found on the internet--move across the screen like a vertical scroll.
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Relics and Records of Action
François Bucher, MK Guth, Alois Kronschlaeger, Dread Scott, Francisco Ugarte, Tim YoudIn other instances paper acts as a record of the artist's process. Both Alois Kronschlaeger and François Bucher create cyanotypes and photograms with images burned into the paper by chemical reaction. Kronschlaeger's is made by sewing intricate patterns into mesh laid over paper, while Bucher's is made with accumulated circles of acetate, layered to create a concentric pattern. Tim Youd's works are relics of the artist's performances, in which he retypes entire novels on only two pieces of paper that are taped together and fed through the typewriter over and over until the book is finished. MK Guth's book outlines the artist's instructions for creating a dinner-as-performance art. Francisco Ugarte, an artist who was previously trained as an architect, can also be considered in this group. At first glance, his Self-Portrait looks like a cityscape, but a wide shot of his desk reveals that it is actually an outline of the shadows cast by architectural tools on his work surface. Dread Scott's triptych of photos shows the artist burning a copy of the US Constitution, until a pile of ashes and scraps of paper remain at his feet.
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Meta Mirrors
Melanie Baker, Joan Linder, Jeff WallaceRounding out the exhibition is a series of self-reflexive works that demonstrate an appreciation for all things “meta." Melanie Baker’s drawing shows a hand resting on books. Taken from a portrait of US President Andrew Johnson, paper here is a symbol of power and the racist policies and legislature Johnson was able to enact following the Civil War. Another work with a political connection is Joan Linder’s installation featuring the artist’s recreation of over 100 pieces of mail. Including both drawings and sculpture, the project was started ten years ago but Linder adds new works to it periodically, with a recent example being this year’s mail-in ballot from the US Presidential election. Jeff Wallace contributes the other installation in this exhibition with This is dedicated to the one I love. Made of over 350 dedication pages taken from discarded books, the papers are pinned to the wall, forming an analog word cloud showcasing the heartfelt words of the dedication page--meaningful to the writer and dedicatee, but often overlooked by the reader.
PAPER
Current viewing_room