“Slash: Paper Under the Knife” at the Museum of Arts and Design

By: Sarah Blumberg

  There is no doubt in my mind that paper has made a major resurgence over the past few years as the material of choice for many artists.  Maybe this rediscovery has something to do with paper’s malleability and versatility or that, compared to most art-making supplies, it is fairly low-cost.  Regardless of the reason, paper is everywhere.  This past summer, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) presented “Paper: Pressed, Stained, Slashed, Folded,” featuring prints, illustrated books, sculptures, and drawings by artists who mainly emerged during the 1960s and 70s, and who have made use of paper in non-traditional ways.  While unconventional uses for paper in the creation of art are also the focus of the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) exhibition “Slash: Paper Under the Knife,” the third exhibit in MAD’s Materials and Process series, this show’s scope is broader than the one at the MoMA, and it looks at the way that paper is being used to create art in the 21^st century.  Additionally, it is not so much the use of paper itself, but the transformation of the material into intricate and often highly labor-intensive three-dimensional works, that is at the heart of this exhibition.

 
Béatrice Coron, detail of Heavens, cut Tyvek, 12 ft. 10 in. x 45 in. (391.2 x 114.3 cm), 2009. Courtesy of the artist and the Museum of Arts and Design.

I was happy to see that many of my favorite cut-paper artists are featured in “Slash.”  Su Blackwell, Rob Ryan, Béatrice Coron, and Kara Walker are all artists whom I hope to see included in any exhibition showcasing the current trends in paper-related art, and MAD certainly did not disappoint.  Additionally, the seven themes that the works are grouped in – “Form and Space: Slicing Architecture,” “Cutting as Gesture: Drawing with the Knife,” “Dissecting the Past: Myths, Memories,” “Culture Clashes: Politics on the Edge,” “Cutting as Typography: Exploring Landscape,” “Shredding the Word: Books and Language”, and “Corporeal Concerns: Revealing the Body” – are surprisingly helpful in that they both add a structure to a very large exhibit and establish the relationship between the artworks within each section.

 
Olafur Eliasson, with Kremo, Mosbach, Germany (Maker) and the Library Council of the The Museum of Modern Art, New York (Distributor), Your House, laser-cut and hand-bound book, 4 1/2 x 17 3/4 x 11 1/2 in. (11.4 x 45.1 x 29.2 cm), 2006. Courtesy of the artist, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York, and the Museum of Arts and Design.

The MAD literature about “Slash” continually mentions transformation as the exhibition’s guiding theme, but I think that obsession might have been a better choice.  It is obsession that leads an artist to hand-cut 74 layers of graphite lines that, when shown together, form a work that is somewhere between drawing, sculpture and collage, such as with Adam Fowler’s Untitled.  Fixation motivates the creation of a large sculpture of St. George and the Dragon from small, complexly assembled pieces cardboard, as Chris Gilmour has done with The Triumph of Good and Evil, or the image of a sprawling tree with people in its branches, cut from Shoji paper, such as with Ed Pien’s 96”x196” Night Gathering.  Yes, the paper used in these works is transformed from something that is usually taken for granted in its ordinariness into three-dimensional works that utilize space, light and layers of material in their creation and interpretation, but within this larger theme of transformation are the labor-intensive and highly-personal works themselves. 

Andrea Dezsö, Women in Red with Black Sting, hand-cut paper, thread, acrylic paint, mixed media, 7 x 5 x 6 in. (17.8 x 12.7 x 15.2 cm), 2008. Courtesy of the artist and the Museum of Arts and Design.

In addition to the obsessive quality evident in the creation of these pieces, there are also the fascinations with family, history and place.  One of my favorite displays from this show, one that expresses these ideas very well, is Andrea Dezsö’s thirty Tunnel Books, which combine images of memories from her childhood in Transylvania, family lore and legend, cultural myths, and the subconscious to create highly compelling, unsettling and personal books.  Other examples include such works as Nina Katchadourian’s Finland’s Unnamed Islands, in which paper map fragments of the islands off the coast of Finland that are too small to be named on an atlas are displayed between microscopic slides, Carole P. Kunstadt’s Sacred Poem XVI, XXVII, and LII, in which pages from an 1844 Parish Psalmody are variously cut, threaded, covered in gold-leaf, and sewn together to create gorgeous new texts, and Olafur Eliasson’s Your House, a 454 page volume that opens up to reveal a negative version of a three-dimensional architectural model, taking the reader on a journey into and through the artist’s house in Denmark.

Sangeeta Sandrasegar, Untitled #26 (from The Shadow of Murder Lay Upon My Sleep series), cut paper, 18 1/2 x 17 11/16 in. (47 x 45 cm), 2009. Courtesy of the artist and the Museum of Arts and Design.

All of this obsession, all of this detail-oriented and intricate work, can be a little overwhelming, especially as there are a total of 52 artists from 16 countries represented on over two floors of the museum.  Despite the enormity of it all, “Slash” is an exhibition where some of today’s best paper art – work that’s provocative, imaginative, highly personal, and technically impressive – is showcased under one roof, and where there is something for everyone to enjoy.

“Slash: Paper Under the Knife” at the Museum of Arts and Design runs through April 4^th

Museum of Arts and Design

2 Columbus Circle

Take the A, B, C, D, or 1 train to Columbus Circle at 59^th Street, the N, R, Q, or W train to 57^th Street and 7^th Avenue, or the F train to 57^th Street and 6^th Avenue.

Museum hours: Tues-Sun, 11-6; Thurs 11-9; closed M

Exhibition website: http://collections.madmuseum.org/html/exhibitions/485.html