Andrea Dezsö, “Women in Red with Black String,” hand-cut paper, thread, acrylic paint, mixed media, 2008
PAPER UNDER THE KNIFE
Museum of Arts & Design
2 Columbus Circle at 59th St. & Broadway
Tuesday-Sunday through April 4, $15 (pay-what-you-wish Thursdays 6:00 – 9:00)
212-299-7777
www.madmuseum.org
It’s astounding what more than fifty international artists have managed to do in “Slash: Paper Under the Knife,” on view at the Museum of Arts & Design through April 4. Using paper, the artists have cut, sliced, folded, torn, ripped, and lasered the fragile material into a stunning array of sculptures, wall hangings, and site-specific installations bursting with creativity. Divided into such thematic sections as “Cutting as Gesture: Drawing with the Knife,” “Structure and Space: Slicing Architecture,” and “Dissecting the Past: Myths and Memories,” the exhibit, the third part of the museum’s “Materials and Process” series, highlights work that is layered with meaning either hidden right below the surface or emerging from out of it, touching on consumerism, war, slavery, and other topics while also questioning the fragility of life and what is real.
Thomas Demand, “Shed,” C-print on diasec / courtesy 303 Gallery and the Wolkowitz Collection
In “Flat File Globe 3A Red Version,” Noriko Ambe fills the drawers of a red metal cabinet with mountainous cut Yupo paper, each one its own unique landscape. For “Between the Lines,” Ariana Boussard-Reifel has cut every word out of a book. Thomas Demand meticulously re-created an actual life-size setting in “Shed,” took a photo of it that appears to be of a real shed, then destroyed the shed itself. Andrea Dezsö’s tunnel books relate offbeat scenes, as in “Alien Child with Hanging Meat” and “Mantis Resting in Utopian City.” Tom Friedman turns Quaker Oats boxes (and Quaker Oats themselves) into a “Quaker Oats” totem. Mona Hatoum uses tissue paper to portray soldiers with guns along with skulls and explosions. A forest rises from a children’s book in Su Blackwell’s “Rapunzel.” Pietro Ruffo’s “Youth of the Hills” is a tank covered in pages from the Hebrew Bible—but xeroxed copies. And Bféatrice Coron cut her enticing “Heavens & Hells” during a three-week residency at the museum last June. The exhibit also includes work by Lesley Dill, Olafur Eliasson, Nina Katchadourian, Oliver Herring, Judy Pfaff, and Kara Walker.
On March 27 from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm, MAD will be hosting “Moving Paper: An International Film Festival of Cut Paper,” an afternoon of short videos made specifically for the show, all of which incorporate paper in some way. You can also watch the videos online here (www.movingpaper.madmuseum.org).
Also at MAD
Viola Frey, “Family Portrait,” ceramic with glazes, 1995 (courtesy the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution)
As fragile as most of the cut-paper works are in “Slash,” Viola Frey’s large-size ceramic sculptures are more imposing than at first assumed, each one made of several pieces totaling hundreds of pounds. “Bigger, Better, More: The Art of Viola Frey” comprises more than thirty works by the California artist, who died in 2004 at the age of seventy. The monumental sculptures are particularly impressive, mixing folk art with gender issues in a wonderland of imagination. The colorful display also includes pieces from her own collection as well as several sculptures she made with Betty Woodman, who received her own wonderful retrospective at the Met in 2006. Woodman will be part of a special presentation at MAD on March 18 at 6:30, “Viola Frey: Emphatically Present,” which begins with a lecture by curator and author Patterson Sims, followed by a discussion with Sims, Woodman, and MAD curator Lowery Stokes Sims.