Category: Papercut

Your House

Berlin-based artist Olafur Eliasson, a Minimalissimo favourite, conceptualised Your House. The book, designed in 2006 by Michael Heimann and Claudia Baulesch, is a limited-edition artist’s book with a laser-cut negative impression of Eliasson’s house in Copenhagen. Each of the 454 pages are individually cut and corresponds to 2.2 cm of the actual house.

Commissioned by the Library Council of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, Your House is a remarkable arrangement of cutouts and imagery presented in a minimalist yet technical format. Readers gradually build a physical and mental narrative, whilst also examining the perceptual and spatial experience of domestic architecture of the house.

Although I haven’t had the pleasure of reading one of the 225 printed copies (perhaps one day), I love of the combination of sculpture and architecture and the illusion of being inside the house.

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Works in Paper

Sydney-based freelance designer and paper artist Bianca Chang has created a beautiful bespoke collection of 3-dimensional letterforms – Works in Paper.

The recreation of the 3D effect was achieved by hand-plotting and cutting multiple sheets of 80gsm 100% post consumer waste recycled paper. This minimises the impact of paper consumption and consciously transforms a typically disposable medium into a long term piece of art.

Whether or not you’re a type fiend, the shadow-play and subtlety of tones are undeniably brilliant.

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Holes or Slashes

The Argentinean sculptor and painter, Lucio Fontana quite literally cuts through modern art, with these iconic paintings.

The slashes through the monochromatic paintings, which he describes as an art for the Space Age, with which its concepts are very much ahead of his time, still lingers in my mind today.

You can catch some of Fontana’s famous series “Buchi o Tagli” (holes or slashes) this month from the 27th of September at the Robilant+Voena in London.

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Papercuts

“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” That’s what Michaelangelo said, some 500 years ago. I could also easily have been a quote from contemporary artist Peter Callesen, were it not that Calleson’s material isn’t marble – it’s paper.

When I look at a sheet of A4 paper, I see a printable object. Callesen however sees little stories, hidden within them: failytales, romantic encounters, or dramatic tragedies.

Through delicate cuts, the artist allows tiny, fragile figures to erect themselves from the paper – but without ever escaping where the material they came from.

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