October 11, 2009

Paper: the materiality

With materiality the concept and medium are one. What is it about this material that is unlike any other?

Paper has many associations: paper mill, sheet, tree, forest, green, environment, global warming, book, print, cut, pulp, log, lumber, sculpture, texture, fibers, lint, tear, laser, mache, decoupage, collage, glue, Chinese origins, plants, cellulose, wood, cotton, flax, ink, pen, renewable resource, seeds, plant, folk tradition of paper cutting in Mexico and Germany, fragile, knife, outlines, communication, 2-D

Artists who use paper and blew my mind:
Chris Natrop: room-sized installations of hand-cut paper.




















Su Blackwell: book-cut sculptures with a "pop-up" type feel.


















Yulia Brodskaya: expressive typography from colorful paper.




















Paper is traditionally a vehicle for meaning or communication, but what happens when the message or ink or graphite is striped away? Does the paper communicate? Does it communicate as well? Does the paper alone communicate better?

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