An exhibition devoted to artists who do more than put pencil to paper, ’Slash: Paper Under the Knife’ - the latest show from New York’s Museum of Arts and Design - will feature a range of new works by artists who have taken the medium at more than mere face value.
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A veritable feast of cut, burnt, torn, crumpled and shredded paper, the exhibition features work from the likes of Thomas Demand, Olafur Eliasson, Tom Friedman and Kara Walker to name but a few.
Championing an art form we’d feared all but lost with the insatiable rise of the digital age, Slash: Paper under the knife’ takes contemporary art back to grass roots, with work from over 50 international artists - a whole host of whom are famed for their less than traditional approach.
Take, for instance, Olafur Eliasson. Best known for his monolithic, experiential light installations, Eliasson’s laser-cut, sculptural attack on an encyclopedic book is a world away (in final form at least) from the over-sized sun which took residence in London’s Tate Modern a few years back - yet no less awe-inspiring.
Thomas Demand’s full-scale paper environments may provide more familiar territory, but Oliver Herring’s life-sized photographic, sculptural montages and Andreas Kock’s imposing black paper explosions prove that paper still has an edge when it comes to the contemporary scene.
Last week saw an extended preview of the exhibition, with members of the public invited to witness six of the Slash artists installing site-specific paper works within the museum’s fourth and fifth floor galleries.
Featuring Andrea Mastrovito’s gigantic paper installation - which depicts a storm swallowing up Christopher Columbus’s ship - and a range of offerings from the likes of Mark Fox and Tomas Rivas, this is one show with more substance than it’s ephemeral associations would perhaps suggest.
