ISBN 87-90538-31-5

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On paper 2010

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Lawrence Anastasi, William Anastasi, Bella Angora, William Anthony,Thomas Bang, Thorbjørn Bechmann, Anne Bennike, Alexandra Berlinger,Kristleifur Björnsson, Ditte Bolt, Niels Bonde, Dove Bradshaw, Jes Brinch,Flemming Brusgaard, Søren Dahlgaard, Jeanette Ehlers, Susanne Eybl,Jesper Fabricius, Christian Falsnaes, Martin Fraenkel, Nils Erik Gjerdevik,Lars Grenaae, Nilbar Güres, Thorgej Steen Hansen, Jochem Hendricks,Berit Heggenhougen Jensen, Peter Holst Henckel, Kristian Hornsleth,Barbara Husar, Marie Irmgard, Lidy Jacobs, John Krogh, Thorbjørn Lausten,Katrin von Maltzahn, Tati Meir, Lone Mertz, Albert Mertz, Ultra Grøn (Morten Leck Plesner and Christian E. Dinesen), Tiina Elina Nurminen,Kaj Nyborg, Janet Passehl, Hans Peterson, Sebastian Quedenbaum,Nikolaj Recke, Finn Reinbothe, Stefan Saffer, Steinunn Helga Siguròardóttir,Morten Tillitz, Iv Toshain, Vu Thi Trang, Anu Tuominen, Ulrick Weck,Hulda Vilhjamsdottier, Fabian Weinecke, Gunnar Örn

Curator: Sam Jedig

Exhibition oN paper March 27 - May 6, 2010

Stalke GalleriEnglerupvej 62, Kirke Sonnerup4060 Kirke SaabyDenmark

Tel. +45 2926 7433Stalke@stalke.dk

ISBN: 87-90538-31-5

All rights® reserved: ©2010 authors, photographers as listed and the publisher Stalke Gallery

Spiritonpaper

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airplane like on this catalogue. Just think about a kid playing with it.

What is more suitable for a playful exhibition with artworks, which are making use of this media in all kinds of ways? Isn’t paper the basic medium of making art? There are surely very few artists who never used it in their creative process at acertain point.

But nevertheless paper, as a medium is not as easy as it seems: Its approximately 2200-year-old history might about to be over. It is definitely in its last chapter. In the ancient China paper was something holy and the making of it a carefully protected secret. The Arabs brought it to the west and with Gutenberg’s letter press machine it got its breakthrough: money, books, documents, pamphlets, pictures, photos, photocopies. It became the communication media from the highest to the lowest culture for the next 500 years.

Paper aNd dIgItal culture

Now we are in the middle of a new revolution of communication: More and more information in our culture becomes digital. The computer displaces paper, which means that a material information carrier is displaced by a virtual one. We can only guess where it leads. The fact is: credit cards displace money, kids are using their notebooks instead of exercise books and David Hockney just demonstrated how great it is to make drawings on his iPod.One might think so that paper is a bit old fashioned and that contemporary artists should use other media, which fits better in our connected world.But paper as a medium has special qualities, which are worth holding on to:

Paper aNd BodY

To draw a line on paper is a direct trace of a hand’s movement on to a material carrier.The use of digital media always cuts off this direct connection because of the digital translation of the information. Looking at that drawn line refers directly to the humanbody. William Anastasi reduces the process of drawing precisely to this fact.Composition, figuration, everything is left out. There is only this single line going back and forth following the silent rhythm of the hand.

the memorY of paper

The first impression of this exhibition is the amazing range of styles in this media. But not only the style, also what artists do with this material is widespread: You can draw, write on it, fold it, cut, rip and glue it, stick holes into it or print on it. All these possibilities you don’t have on canvas. You find it in sculpture, but while sculpture can make use of all kind of materials here it’s always paper. Beside that its use is far beyond just being an artist’s material: all kind of text has been printed on it – not only literature, but also mathematical diagrams, architectural plans, illustrations in biology and other sciences. There is the Japanese origami tradition of folding figures; you can use paper for modelling as papier-mâché, just to mention a few things. Using paper as an artist connects you to a wide ranging memory of its use.

aN exteNtIoN of mind

Paper and pen are inexpensive, easy to get everywhere, easy to handle. Therefore theyare such suitable media for artists to do sketches or immediate indications of thoughts.That makes it the first representation of the creative process, a material extension of thethinking mind. If you are doing performance or video: you clear and formulate your ideas best on paper. Christian Falsnæs is a good example of this method: The sketches for his performances anticipates the work he has in mind, but also have their own visuallanguage. Because paper is in this way so close to the artists mind it has something intimate, which is rarely found in finished works like a sculpture or a painting.

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All kids draw on paper. Not all of them become artists, but those who do have taken their firsts steps with this material. It continues in school and art schools. Beside all the new media you can choose, academies are still holding on to offer drawing classes. Paper is the media for studying. Here artists are trying to work out their ideas.

Paper IS egalItarIaN

Sometimes you can observe that if an artist is suddenly lucky enough to make a good deal of money with his works, his production changes: He can afford a bigger studio, use more expensive material, hire assistances or even a whole staff or company to produce his artworks. Working on paper has no high production costs. All artists can afford it. All are on the same level. In this show where famous artists are hanging next to unknown artists, differences can be experienced in the content or formal accomplishment, not in the production costs.

Paper IS for art loverS

In the entrance hall of an insurance company or any large firm you will often find huge canvases with more or less sophisticated geometric shapes. The artists are well known – more for their prices than what their art really is about. Here art is about prestige. A flat decorated with some small works – over the sofa, at the kitchen table or in the bedroom – shows something different: a person who loves art and likes to be surrounded by it. For this art lover works on paper are ideal: The prices are not so high (if you stay away from the big names) and paperworks are affordable to a lot of young collectors who are starting to collect. What you get is maybe not prestige; with a small drawing you get a friend or companion for life, where you can warm your heart. You don’t get less in value: works on paper might be not so elaborate, but they still carry the essence of art: the spirit of the artist.

Paper IS Not dead

Painting has been declared dead many times and it always came back proving to be much alive. So even though the digital revolution is changing all our lives we can be sure that paper is not going to die out soon.

Even if you use paper for digital photos there is still one bigdifference to having the same photos saved on a hard disk: There you can delete them with one mouse click.- A paper you have to ripe into pieces, throw out or burn.Several artists in the show are demonstrating this resistanceof paper:

Fabian Weinecke rips pieces of painted paper apart and glues them together again in new shapes to continue working on them: thereby he nullifies failing as something negative. - Paper shreds are not for the scrap but forms the material for the final artwork.Ditte Bold shows digital photos - beautiful coloured compositions. A closer look indeed reveals that there are several layers of paper on top of each other: the sheets under are hidden and we can speculate as to what we could have seen on them: earlier versions on their way to the final perfection? Different motifs, which have been sorted out? We don’t know, but our speculations disturb the perception of the finished works. They become contingent – only one possibility among others.This leads to another quality we can find in paper compared with computer-assisted design: It is an honest media, which keeps all mistakes visible. To erase a line leaves a trace, which still testifies as to what was there. William Kentridge works with this in a beautiful way in his animated films based on charcoal drawing: his fantastic metamorphosis’ of things appears even more intriguing with the traces of the eraser remaining visible.Digital transformations are always clean. The process of manipulation is invisible. To delete or change leaves no traces. Paper has a resistance against manipulation. Even the destruction of paper leaves something behind. There is the famous quote of Heinrich Heine uses to describe the terrible event of the “Bücherverbrennung” 1933 by the Nazis: “Where they burn books, they willultimately also burn people”. The parallel with the soul of books and the soul of people is not thinkable for files: If we delete files, we don’t delete people.

Sebastian Quedenbaum

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Exhibition oN paper March 27 - May 6, 2010

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catalogue puBlISher:Stalke Gallery, Englerupvej 62, Kirke Sonnerup, DK-4060 Kirke Saaby

edItor: Sam Jedig

text BY:Sebastian Quedenbaum

catalogue deSIgN:flink.

photo credItS:Sam Jedig + artists

offSet:Trekroner Offset

Edition: 1st editionISBN: 87-90538-31-5

All rights® reserved: ©2010 authors, photographers as listed and the publisher Stalke Gallery

In aknowledgement of their generosity and creativity:Austrian Embassy Copenhagen, Thomas Rehbein Gallerie, Thomas Bang, William Anthony, Sebastian Quedenbaum, Tine Quedenbaum,Anne Bennike, Flemming Brunsgaard, Trekroner Offset, Lone Wulff,Marie Wulff, Amalie Wulff, Mette Flink and all artists...

ISBN 87-90538-31-5

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