words&image//james roth
When I hear the words “cut paper,” I usually think back to my days of poorly stenciled high school tags, or some strange templates that I cut out with an exacto-blade for design class, as a result or possibly as a result of these failed experiences I’ve never thought “art.”
Slash: Paper Under the Knife is 3 stories of astounding obsessive-compulsive art that comes from 52 artists, based out of 16 different countries. All the works are made from the seemingly simple act of producing incisions on paper products, or as featured artist Rob Ryan puts it, “Paper cutting is stripped down as much as possible. There is no tone, no variation of color, no pencil mark, no brush strokes.” Despite the constructed simplicity, the works are radically and remarkably different from one another.
Brian Dettmer’s Standard American, an altered book made from 21 encyclopedia volumes, hand cut with surgical tools to display multiple texts and images from the defunct texts. This is a reoccurring theme in Dettmer’s alterations, which are a statement of how the shift to digital (WIKI) from analog media (Britannica) renders these previous cornucopias of information into a nostalgic décor feature.
The passing of time seems to be present in a number of works, from the seemingly endless incisions that must have taken months, if not years of precision engineering, but also as a result of the subject matter.
Such as the example of book-making work using the technological high road of Saraben Studio’s Solar Topographies. The studio firm which is an artist/architect team of Ben Cowd and Sara Shafier plotted ancient roman ruins into a computer, and used a laser cutting printer (commonly found in modern architecture firms) to cut sheets of watercolor paper, and then bound them into a book to form a layered volume of western history.
The MAD exhibition is not entirely books however, installations from wall to wall and floor to ceiling punctuate the exhibition with their awesome productions. One particular work that stood out, quite literally, was Andreas Kock’s Paperwork #935G, where Kock uses Hanamuel paper covered with graphite to illustrate, “space as an event,” and how to re-investigate, “real space in a different way.”
Perhaps the most impressively detailed and painstakingly detailed work is made of only cardboard and glue. This is a standard freshman 3D design project at several art schools, but I’ve never seen anything remotely as beautiful as Chris Gilmour’s sculptures, most notably, the one featured at SLASH, The Triumph of Good and Evil. This sculpture demands to be inspected painstakingly, from the eyes of the conquistador to the teeth of the dragon, every single feature is painstakingly crafted to a degree that rivals marble.
Moral of the story is, whatever I have written will not serve justice the elaborate and beautiful creations of these international artists. They need to be seen in person, so buy the ticket, take the ride, and get to 2 Columbus Circle before 4/4.