PAPER CUTS
Sarah Daub l Leslie Mutchler l Adam Parker Smith
April 7 - May 12
PAPER CUTS opens on April 7th and runs through May 12th with the opening reception on Saturday, April 7th from
6-8 pm. Paper is one of the most fundamental materials employed by artists. As children, we're taught how to transform it into a multitude of colorful and decorative objects and imagery including masks, flowers, all manner of holiday iconography and anything else our imagination can conjure. Many contemporary artists have adopted the practice of cutting and shaping paper as their primary approach to creating new art. PAPER CUTS features three artists who utilize paper in distinctively different and sophisticated ways.
Sarah Daub deals with imagery that reflects common anxieties such as the fear of illness, violence, and uncleanliness. Using cut paper, usually made from color-aid, she mingles ornamentation with potentially unsettling elements taken from medical textbooks and everyday illustrations. Combining the decorative and the disquieting she attempts to reconcile the gap between the disparate images by using the soothing qualities of saturated color and pattern to make the ominous depictions more palatable. The cut paper constructions are mounted to heavy drawing paper to give the drawings both actual depth and the illusion of depth.
Leslie Mutchler collects and organizes as a means of making sense of the material life around her. The daily practice of collecting, sorting and then archiving everyday ephemera (post-it notes, envelopes, cards, receipts, found objects, tickets, tags, etc) fuels the cumulative multiple that is her installation work. She chooses to exaggerate the already-amassed, calling attention to the quantity and banality that is our often overlooked everyday experience. This exaggeration also calls attention to the method in which the collection is organized, stacked, separated and shelved. It is the repetitive nature of this order and the beauty that emanates from simplified and functional forms that engages her.
Adam Parker Smith constructs illustrations of dreams and imagined scenarios. His paper paintings and sculptures are about making small incidents cooler and sexier than they actually are, inserting his own encounters within the idealized sheen of a comic book world. He's interested in the appearance of this combination of real events, daydreams and preexisting narratives as they are translated into stylized entities. His love-based themes synthesize dark thoughts of lust and perverse indulgence with the gushy charm and innocent abandon of the high school crush.
Sarah Daub Leslie Mutchler Adam Parker Smith
at flickr