“Paper Cuts” at Elza Kayal Gallery
Mia Pearlman, Surf Zone, 2023. Paper, ink, and glue. Courtesy of the artist and Elza Kayal Gallery.
At Elza Kayal Gallery, the act of cutting up and re-assembling paper in decorative ways speaks to an artistic vernacular that references various modes of cultural heritage and homemaking. Presenting the work of Heather Cox, Jaynie Gillman Crimmins, Samuelle Green, and Mia Pearlman, all of whom are women artists, the group exhibition Paper Cuts expresses a profound interest in fabrication, allowing paper to transcend its flatness and two-dimensionality. By repeating, stacking, and layering modular paper units, the artworks open the viewer’s eyes to how paper’s metamorphosis contributes to expressive storytelling and to the discussions around nature, recycling, or the distribution of information.
Samuelle Green, Snug. Paper, wire, glue, and grey paper. Courtesy of the artist and Elza Kayal Gallery.
In Mia Pearlman’s Entrapment (2023), curved paper, ropes, and nets come together to form a sculpture that extends down to the gallery floor. Utilizing a teal-blue color palette frequently associated with nature and life. Pearlman’s sculptures, echoing the curvilinear motifs of waves, water, wind patterns, “sea creatures[,] and geological formations,” reflect a close attention and connection to universal shapes, as encountered by the shared experience of existing in nature, which is oftentimes overlooked in today’s post-digital and mega-urbanized world. This universal language perhaps stems from her previous public art commissions that engaged a decidedly more diverse audience compared to frequent gallery-goers. Similarly, Samuelle Green evokes the iconography of animals’ habitations found in the wilderness; the clusters of paper rolls mimic the forms of beehives, anthills, and anthills. These shapes appear more stationary compared to Pearlman’s whimsical, motion-filled aesthetic, creating a nice contrast despite their shared source of inspiration.
Heather Cox, Float, 2023. Photograph and staples on paper. 24” x 18”. Courtesy of the artist and Elza Kayal Gallery.
The other two artists in the show direct their attention to how people engage with media as an apparatus of informational ideology. Heather Cox’s work embodies a transformative odyssey of photographs. Cox recycles found photographs and conducts a radical rethinking of their expressive capacities by creating perforations on their surfaces, linking them together with wires, and generating new shapes. All of a sudden, these photographs are no longer the primary object of analysis but rather a component of sculptures that take up space. The layering and lacing of the hundreds of photographs essentially obscure the individual narratives taking place in each photo; instead, the viewer is encouraged to think about how the manipulation of images change how stories are told.
Jaynie Gillman Crimmins, Equanimity #9, 2022. Shredded New Yorker magazines and security envelopes over post consumer armature. 12"x12"x 1.5". Courtesy of the artist and Elza Kayal Gallery.
Jaynie Crimmins starts her process from “marketing tools” such as catalogues, magazines, and flyers printed with metal ink. As these sheets of paper are not able to decompose properly, Crimmins extracts them out of the waste circulation system, cuts them into strips around the size of a pinky finger, and rolls them up into paper beads, which she then glues together into symmetrical, undulating shapes whose meanings are open to interpretation. According to the artist, print publications such as the New Yorker magazine are predicated upon power structures that promote “the construct of beauty, wealth, and taste.” Both literally and figuratively, the artist tears down these sheets of paper loaded with implicit power, transforming them into balanced geometries that do not impose predetermined messages onto the viewer.
Metamorphosis, the apparent theme of the show, relates to the heterogeneity of process and the variety of techniques. Within this exhibition’s exploration of fabrication techniques, one could also be further prompted to think about modularity, the relationship between the part and the whole, and the expansion of dimensionality.
Paper Cuts was on view at Elza Kayal Gallery between September 14th and October 7th, 2023.
—
You Might Also Like:
