PAPER IS ART NOW
Paper is more than a medium in Paper Goods, an exceptional group exhibition, which opened last night at the Susan Eley Fine Art Gallery, in New York. Featuring six artists’ works on paper, curated by Kara L. Rooney, this is not simply a collection of drawings or sketches, it is a broad horizon, arcing from surprising watercolors to intricate collage to constructs stitched together with thread and vision.
“Paper is a stopgap between memory and reality,” says Rooney. It is the record that keeps the memory honest. It’s the bridge between ideas and productions. In visual art, works on paper tend to be more casual than canvasses. A place for loose line and color. A place to approximate. But works on paper can also be precious. They are an intimate connection between artist and witness, with an unparalleled immediacy and urgency. They are vulnerable, often fragile, yet strong representations of an artist’s state of flow. And Paper Goods delivers.
The hyper-saturated color in Chuck Webster’s mixed media piece, Untitled, draws you in from across the room, despite its tiny dimension, riveting you to the 4” x 5” spot on the wall where it hangs. Color and shape play differently in Webster’s hands, demanding connection between observation and deep experience. Untitled expands that experience, not only by its size, but by the way it makes you wonder. Both works on paper feel canvas-like on many levels, as Webster’s paint techniques transforms them into strong pieces push the wall backwards in both space and consciousness.
Work by Saya Woolfalk: Hide from a North American Empathic (2012). Linen and cotton pulp, plastic mirriors, wood, plastic bones, abaca paper, embroidery floss, synthetic felt, plastic beads, feathers, fabric paint, cotton fabric, syntheitc hair, plastic rhinestones, cotton dollies. 60" x 40"
“When is the work of art the paper itself and when is it the marks made upon the surface?” Rooney asks. It is a question that swirls around each piece in this show. Take Hide from a North American Empathic, by Saya Woolfalk, for example, and you will see that the answer to the question is undeniably “both.” A paper abstraction of animal hide, arms, legs, and neck, splayed in death, brimming with life, densely encrusted with a treasure trove of bits and pieces of wood, beads, feathers, rhinestones, fiber pulp, embroidery floss, lace, and mirrors, this piece becomes a totem, with spiritual callings.
Work by Elena Berriolo, Transcriptions and Variations from Domenico Gnoli (2012), Thread, paper, pen, and watercolor. 11.3" x 14" 16-page book, housed in a stitched linen envelope case made by the artist
Another set of works, using thread to stitch together a visual narrative, are genius-inspired pieces from Elena Berriolo. Imagine her piercing paper with her needle, pulling thin filaments through, strategically, carefully, but with confidence in informality. Berriolo works with a book format, creating dream journals that document her journeys, real and fantastical. Images on both sides of the page form unlikely double page spreads that, at first blush, appear as separate ideas, then elicit the aahs of synergy. Meticulously crafted, some black and white, like La Notte, and some curiously colored, like Transcriptions and Variations from Domenico Gnoli, they make you want to touch, to read, to dive into the pages and be transported.
Work by Andrea Belag: Untitled (2012) Watercolor on paper. 30" x 22", series of four
Andrea Belag’s watercolors, all Untitled, take off in an opposite direction. These are fast swipes of vivid color, brushed across the paper in impetuous fits. How can such simple gestures, seemingly innocent and naive, have the power to hold you? When you look at how the paint is loaded and trailed, how the colors manage to evoke sophisticated thoughts, how the flat swaths create subtle depth of field, you still won’t know it intellectually, but you will feel it emphatically.
Two Paper Goods artists, Tom McGlynn and Joan Waltemath, employ rectangles within the rectangular shapes of their paper medium. Waltemath’s works, like East Above Simple Joys, almost ghostly in nature, construct spatial voids with a minimalist palette of egg tempera, gouache, pencil, and oil pastel on khadi paper, contrasting white and pale grays with sharp black and primary colored punctuations. While McGlynn’s Survey pieces are deceptively simple acrylic and gouache studies of relationship.
Work by Tom McGlynn: Survey 21 (2013) Acrylic & gouache on paper. 22" x 30"
