joseph scissorhands: Tearing, Punching, Squeezing, Drilling

Bonolo Kavula

…bending, creasing, crumpling, folding, pressing, squeezing, compressing, stretching, scoring, piercing, tearing, slitting, cutting, glueing, knocking, beating, drilling, sawing….” - Oscar Holweck.

As an artist working in paper I am always naturally drawn to exhibitions making this medium their focus. I enjoy seeing what others are driven to create in the medium. There have been a number of shows dedicated to the humble paper medium of late, displaying artists' different approaches and responses to its materiality. There was a major survey of Picasso's work with paper (here), and another demonstrating the ways in which Korean artists create Hanji paper and then use it ingeniously to create art and artefacts specific to their culture (here), (here), and (here), and also artist Angela Glajcar's work with paper (here). This inspiring exhibition though focuses solely on younger contemporary artists who work with the medium of paper, manipulating and exploiting its qualities with a variety of techniques to produce an array of different outcomes both sculptural and two dimensional. Though the exhibitors here are younger, their work is centred around and in dialogue with a piece in the show by the German artist - Oscar Holweck (1924-2007), a pioneer in his experimental works with paper as an artistic medium in itself. Holweck is represented here by a small piece from his Diary Series on creamy yellow paper extracted from a book which he then drilled into, creating something both radically minimalist and abstract. It looks like a piece of scripture, an ancient relic inscribed with an obscure text. I have searched for more information on Holweck but have been unable to find any biographical information on his career in English. I was pleased to read that Patrick Heide Contemporary Art will be devoting a show solely to his work later in the year. Of the other artists in the show Sam Lock deconstructs books specifically from the 1930s and one in particular entitled The World's Greatest Paintings. Lock tears out pages which he then assembles on a canvas and adds painterly, gestural marks to create layered abstractions. Lock states “book paper or covers already come with an absent presence; writer, publisher, binder, owner, reader – who have already left their mark, my marks follow on and add my moments in time to the palimpsest.” I liked the physicality and the sense of space occupied by Jonathan Callan's sculptures composed of books which he squeezes and warps out of shape and context and fixes into shape with screws creating some lovely undulating, writhing forms of colour. The most delicate works in the exhibition are those of Bonolo Kavula in which lengths of gridded thread are punctuated with colourful hole punched dots taken from magazines which feature black women on their covers, creating regular geometries and fragile abstract works akin to textiles. The resultant artworks shimmer beautifully in the light. These were perhaps my favourite pieces in the exhibition as they are quite similar in spirit and technique to my stitched and hole punched works. The works of these three artists engage in a spirited dialogue with that of Holweck. I cannot wait to explore more of his work later in the year at this gallery.