Peel Gallery unveiled innovative paper creations when it debuted its latest exhibition, PAPERcuts, on Friday.
The collection features nine artists representing Japan, Switzerland, Canada, the United Kingdom and the U.S.
‘With the coming of the digital age, many wondered about the future of paper. The artists of PAPERcuts have embraced the versatility of paper,’ Peel Gallery founder Steven Hempel said.
Artists Erik and Martin Demaine test the physical boundaries of the curved line in their origami series ‘Pushing Curves to the Limit.’
The inspiration for their art goes back to Bauhaus in the late 1920s. Bauhaus is an architecture and applied arts school in Germany that is known for fusing art with technology.
The duo’s chosen medium is elephant hide, a paper known for holding folded creases. Using a circular piece of elephant hide, they carefully fold the paper to yield concentric circles that react to the tension created by the folds.
Erik’s affinity for mathematics and physics and Martin’s experience as a glass blower and origami enthusiast are the main influences on the group’s style.
‘Beautiful science is worth doing,’ Martin said.
The Demaines originally hail from Halifax, Nova Scotia, a province in eastern Canada. Erik moved to Boston to study mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Erik was the first MIT researcher to study the mathematics of origami.
As an accomplished undergraduate, Erik began teaching at MIT. The 26-year-old is now an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT.
‘We’re trying to understand how the curved creases work,’ Erik said about how mathematics and physics can create three-dimensional forms.
Erik is an internationally recognized artist with three pieces in the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art in New York City and the Elliott Avedon Museum and Archive of Games at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario.
Fellow PAPERcuts artist Susan Stockwell’s ‘Trayne’ is an amazing example of art created from recycled paper products.
Stockwell sewed stained coffee filters and wax paper portion cups into a life-size dress with a form-fitting bodice and a flowing train. The bodice is composed of smaller, flattened portion cups, while the voluminous train is composed of larger coffee filters. The long, espresso-dyed train accentuates the regal nature of the garment.
While viewing ‘Trayne,’ Houstonian quilting artist Rex Watson identified the use of ‘grandmother’s flower garden,’ a quilting pattern with hexagonal pieces that creates a fabric effect in the bodice.’ The well-tailored bodice flows into an elegant gown with the train attached to the back of the gown just below the waistline.
PAPERcuts curators Hempel, Jose Solis and Lea Weingarten point out that Stockwell, a British artist, used popular products such as coffee and paper that were traded during the early British Empire. Although she used traditional British commodities, Stockwell combined the conventional media selection and pattern with the recent trend of re-tasking paper.
Pieces of Frank Gehry’s iconic corrugated cardboard furniture are also on display at Peel Gallery. ‘The Wiggle Stool’ was first manufactured in 1972 as a part of the Easy Edges series. German manufacturer Vitra commercially produces the Wiggle Stool.
‘Today, if there’s frugality, I’m ready. I’ll do corrugated again. It’s fun to work that way, and it’s easy. Why spend all the money for fancy details and stuff? You don’t need it. You can get the passion with simpler things,’ Frank Gehry said in the article Frank Gehry considers an accomplished past and uncertain future published March 1 in the Los Angeles Times.
The pieces showcased in the PAPERcuts exhibition are structural wonders of the fiber art world. In discussing the future of fiber art, Rex Watson said, ‘The issue for fiber art is to move out of craft art into fine art. We’re working very hard to move beyond that.’
From paper shoes to Frank Gehry’s cardboard stools, the range of style and function in PAPERcuts reflects the artists’ radically different points of view.
‘Whether it is cut, folded, stained or shredded, paper is a remarkably versatile material that, manipulated in the right hands, can achieve stunning results,’ the Peel Gallery curators wrote of the exhibition.
