On Paper

“Leonardo didn’t just think on paper: he thought through paper. Paper was not the pre-liminary to other work: it was the work.”

This post is a contradiction of sorts. Coming to you, sort of ‘live’ (in the sense that I am a living being, last time I checked) from the virtual pen, paper and ink that is my computer screen to yours. I’m sure you could see my point that it is not the most appropriate medium or convincing place to begin writing a post all about the joys and uses of paper. In fact the 'blog post' is actually a kind-of evolution of paper, the ugly (or not so) ugly stepsister of the good old papyrus minus the tree felling, mill and stationers’ shelves.

 

 Anyway I’ve done and continue to do so, consume my fair share of paper. For as long as I and many others continue to buy tickets, possess money, wrap presents, receive junk mail, draw, read newspapers, write lists, buy fish and chips, use loo roll, eat sweets, accumulate receipts we don’t need, then paper isn’t something that’s going to disappear anytime soon. And not to mention, of course when it comes to books I’m a self-confessed paper omnivore. The most versatile, light, durable, precious and yet throw-away of all materials; paper has a LOT going for it. Ian Sansom in his tactile papery book, ‘Paper: An Elegy’ quotes Derrida who remarked, “To say farewell to paper today would be rather like deciding one day to stop speaking because you had learnt to write.”

 

 In that vein, what this post lacks in actual paper it makes up for with plenty of pulp! When I came across an exhibition called, ‘Paper’ at the Saatchi Gallery in London a few weeks back, I could hardly resist.

 

‘Paper’ features over 40 National and International artists all of whom use some form of paper either as a construction material, surface or medium within their work. For some, the paper becomes the work itself; it is manipulated, folded, wielded, torn, cut and pasted and for others, paper becomes the surface from which the artist communicates. What was interesting for me personally was that there was a good variety of both the expected and unexpected and I walked away feeling that paper’s integrity as a medium for drawing on had been kept intact as well as having been presented some more innovative ideas in both how ambitious and creative some of the drawings were and seeing some of the more sculptural applications, innovations and uses of paper.

 

Josef Albers educated at the Bauhaus in the late 1920’s wrote on paper (on paper, hee),

 

“paper, in handicraft and industry, is generally used lying flat; the edge is rarely utilised. For this reason we try paper standing upright, or even as a building material; we reinforce it by complicated folding; we use both sides; we emphasise the edge. Paper is usually pasted; instead of pasting it we try to tie it, to pin it, to sew it, to rivet it. In other words we fasten it in a multitude of different ways. At the same time we learn by experience its properties of flexibility and rigidity, and its potentialities in tension and compression. We try to experiment, to train ourselves in ‘constructive thinking”.

 Ok, I know that’s all very Constructivist sounding in terms of art theory, but the nature of how Albers is describing the materiality of paper and its capabilities is still relevant today and I feel its influence is felt in the diversity of work in this exhibition. Below are a series of selected works from the exhibition and a few of my scribing's....

Dawn Clements (pictured here and in the image above) creates large scale pen and ink drawings as an act of remembering and documentation. They are incredibly detailed especially when you consider they are of remembered interiors, but it also explains why they are also staggered, fractured and in some places beams and doorways fade into nothingness. For me, what I found most interesting was the way she has used large sheets of paper, all different sizes, orientations and
overlapped them to create a work that has no fixed edge and inhabits the gallery space. It makes me rethink a habit, that I share probably with many others, of capturing space i.e. an interior within the rectangle of the paper (mostly because there's a practicality and manageability to doing it that way) when perhaps to really capture a 'sense of place' you need to leave the perimeters of the paper. As a result I viewed this work more like a stage set, or a sequence as the artist moved around the space she was drawing.

Spiralling bottles heading round and round in a seemingly never ending vortex. No wonder Tal R's drawings are described as 'visions of creative fecundity'. One of a series of relatively small line drawings which become ever increasingly depraved and disturbing. Looking at ideas of artistic genius the drawings are packed with distorted characters, featuring women giving birth to Picasso-like sculptures and more (you got one of the more boring images here, sorry!) Other than drawing I'm not sure this offers much of an insight into paper per sae but there was something in the cartoony, yet detailed nature of these crazed looking drawings that made me stop and think, 'Was it just rubbish drawing or was there something more going on here?' I'd probably side with the opinion that the 'quality' of the drawing becomes somewhat irrelevant and its actually more about the 'what' is being drawn that is more engaging.

It may be a bit of a 'one liner' but 'Fragments of Time' by Miler Lagos has been incredibly well made, with each of these forms (that look like logs or branches) has been made from densely stacked sheets of newspaper and then sanded at the edges giving them their woody-like colouring/markings. So however cliché you may want to get analysing this as being a statement on paper coming from trees, waste material, recycling, unprocessed information etc. its innovative manipulation of the material is really quite exciting. A sheet of paper on its own is very light but put it in a pile and it can become very heavy; take it back to being a tree and its enormously heavy. Except the point made here is that once you turn the tree into paper there isn't really any going back, just illusion.

Sometimes the quietest, smallest and most unassuming things can have the most impact. Yuken Teruya with delicate precision and sensitivity transforms paper shopping bags into viewing platforms from which a paper tree has been cut from the roof of the same bag. There's nothing like a bit of curiosity in art to get people's attention and upon seeing rows of people starring into shopping bags lined on shelves on the gallery wall I immediately wanted to go in myself for a closer look. Again, the connections between consumerism and the cycle of tree to paper is perhaps all too obvious but nonetheless they were a joy to look at. And in terms of affect, they are probably all the more memorable because of it.

Paul Westcombe draws on coffee cups. If I was the kind of person who drank tea or coffee I'd like to think I would have started doodling on a cup at some point, it seems like a fun thing to do. Westcombe's cup works originated out of boredom whilst working as a car park attendant in London. They depict intense drawings that depict the artists thoughts as a series of lines, networks and shapes. These kind of doodles done whilst thinking, often on the corner or a receipt or letter are almost meditative ways of thinking. What I enjoy about these cups is that they have that similar treatment as the receipt doodle but instead of being thrown away they've been kept and added to so that the 'art' we make when we're not thinking about making it becomes the actual art itself.

Hundreds of colourful paper kite-shaped forms float and collide gracefully in the centre of gallery seven. This work is Marcelo Jacome's 'Planos-pipas' no 17 (the title, translates as 'kite-planes'). A real advocate of the Saatchi Gallery stereotype, its big, bold and ambitious; the 'show stopper' of the exhibition. Despite my initial cynicism it is very difficult for this piece not to appeal to my inner child-like sense of wonder and pleasing design, geometry, execution and candy-like colour palette. The dynamic chaos of all the shapes met with the gracefulness of its overall swooping form is quite musical and I want to criticise its 'niceness' but somehow feel incapable of doing so from smiling too much.

Han Feng's 'Flaoting City' presents a fictional utopia that is as intangible and transparent as the tracing paper it is made from. Images of buildings have been printed onto tracing paper then folded into cuboid shapes of different heights and scales. These have then been clustered together in groups, streets, islands and fragments hung from the ceiling inches off the gallery floor; perhaps as a reminder of the precariousness of life itself. Taking time to inspect each unique building is mesmerising creating a sense of being 'lost' in the city.

The last time I was this excited about paper as art was at the Liverpool Biennal in 2010 watching Sachiko Abe performing 'Cut papers' in the Blade Factory. It literally involved the artist, dressed in white on a raised platform cutting very fine slithers of white paper. The cut threads created a curtain down from the platform and onto the floor almost like strands of hair. It was beautiful and poignant to experience it and reaffirmed my understanding of how most simple, mundane actions if repeated enough can become not only contemplative but deeply meaningful. As an artist now I still feel there is something reassuring and grounding and a warmth in holding/using/working with paper that I have never felt using canvas, board, metal or any other surface. I enjoy its contradictions depending on how it is manipulated; of being both cutting and used to wrap/protect, light yet heavy, flat or sculpted. It occurs to me now that I have long had an infatuation with paper which explains the care and time I spent over my sketchbooks often pouring more hours into them than my studio work. Could the reason have been something to do with the intimacy and reflection space of having a book? Or was it the joy of working on paper? Same thing, perhaps.

I haven't mentioned half the artists and works in this exhibition, but hope this has given you an idea of what you can expect from 'Paper', so that next time you're rolling a Rizla, lining your cake tins, making paper aeroplanes, writing a love letter, wallpapering the house or simply wiping your bum spare a thought for the brilliance and potential of paper!

'Paper' at Saatchi ended on the 3rd of November but the paper catalogue is still available.

http://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/paper/