Museum of Arts and Design (MAD)

Slash Paper Under the Knife 

45 international artists who work in cut, torn, shredded and burned paper were exhibited across two of Mad's floors. 

'Slash: Paper Under the Knife takes the pulse of the international art world's renewed interest in paper as a creative medium and source of artistic inspiration, examining the remarkably diverse use of paper in a range of art forms' (http://collections.madmuseum.org/html/exhibitions/485.html) 

The exhibit was extremely entertaining and really highlighted the diverse qualities of paper.I didn't feel the exhibit was a particularly deep and meaningful experience, although a few pieces did capture my interest and got me thinking. On the whole the exhibit simply seemed a joyous celebration of the use and craft of paper and there's nothing wrong with that!! 

As you entered the lobby of MAD Andrea Mastrovito's large scale installation of Christopher Columbus's ship caught in a storm hanging unside down from the ceiling, is there to greet you!

Inside the exhibit I enjoyed seeing an orginial Rob Ryan and the rather miserable decription that accompanied it! Ryan explains that his work has always told the same story over and over about sadness, being alone and longing for love which is the condition he finds himself in. The form of cut out paper has such simplicity in its absence of tone, pencil marks, brush strokes etc that it means people now relate to this work, being more readily available and easy to read. 

Su Blackwell was also in the exhibition, famous for altering Children's books into sculpted book art that tells the same tale by transforming the words and pages of the book into a sculpted image.  Her work is described as being about transformation, 'taking the familiar and turning it into the fantastical'. She is described as using 'non art materials such as books to create works that evoke a sense of melancholy or magical enhancement'. I enjoyed Blackwell's playful work that turns the medium of a book on its head and develops ideas of never ending cycles in life and a reworking of the everyday norm. 

Tomas Gabzdil Libertiny from Studio Liberty's piece - 'The Paper Vases'  was another work that caught my eye with a similar theme of transformation. Perfect white vases were created from 5 sets of 700 printed pieces of paper- the only materials being ink, wood glue and copper plate. They were simple pure objects with an image of a tree subtly appearing on each and they looked extremely far removed from the flimsy material of paper from which they were constructed. The vases were described as having a dilect of nature, questioning what nature is by exploring 'a dialect of nature and culture...the relationships between wood transformed to paper and paper transformed to wood and paper transformed to reveal a tree'.

 Other themes within the exhibit included transformations of maps and landscapes, 'authoratitive descriptions of the world around us' such as the work of Nina Katchadourian. Also of interest was the investigations of the accelerated and uncontrolled growth of cities, Daniel Alcala's 'New Typologies' (note image is from her work 'paperscape' not New Typologies' of which no image is available.) 

The elaborate and intricate scene set from Andrew Scott Ross related to my exploration of miniature worlds and 'fantasy scenes' within my silence brief and I admired its large scale yet minutely detailed proportions. A real fantasy world of living paper! 

Also of note was Georgia Russel's 'The Story of Art' with its notions of  the past and of passing time. She cuts up and manipulates objects to explore not only a time consuming process but notions of what is left once she has finished and questions what is left as time has past and is non returnable.