joseph scissorhands: October 2022

Saturday, 29 October 2022

Olga de Amaral

Olga de Amaral - Strata XV, 2009 (detail)

"I find that the knot is the beginning of everything. Everything is accidental to me. An accident becomes a work." - Olga de Amaral.

Another lovely new discovery this, of the weavings of renowned Colombian artist Olga de Amaral, at what is her first London show in a decade. The work here feeds into my current artistic interests and relates very nicely to the works of other creators in the art/craft/textile fields also discovered by myself earlier this year by makers such as Lenore Tawney (here), and Peter Collingwood (here). As with these two, de Amaral's work sits comfortably between the fibre art and fine art divide. This exhibition contains important pieces in the development of her oeuvre from the 1960s to the present and they are just mesmerisingly beautiful with lustrous surfaces that shimmer to reflect and refract the light. The surfaces of some of the pieces were really surprising as the technical way in which they are woven closely resemble the composition of the microscopic, irridescent scales and plates which comprise the surfaces of butterfly wings. The comparison was really uncanny. In other pieces the surfaces are comprised of worked, massed tangles of finer, pigmented threads creating wonderfully tactile surface textures. As I work with so much gold leaf, the pieces in which de Amaral worked into and similarly coated the surfaces with gold leaf really resonated with me. Strata XV, impressed me enormously. I was transfixed by the play of light creating movement across its surface. It actually seemed to ripple as my eyes passed over the buckled surface, and it appeared to crumple under its own weight. It brought to mind the equally gorgeous 'metal cloths' of woven gold bottle tops created by Ghanaian sculptur El Anatsui (here). Another personal highlight for me was the early piece Luz Blanca, a frothing, ethereal, cascading concoction of layered polythene which reflected the light and again appeared to move and glow in its absorption and reflection of the light. Olga de Amaral's spectacular weavings are wonderful things. I am so glad to have made their acquaintance.

Viento 2, 2014

Lienzo ceremonial 25, 1998

Imagen perdida 6, 1992

Luz blanca, 1969/1992/2010

Cestar lunar 50B, 1991/2017

Piedra Blanca 3, 2006

Lienza E, 2015

Umbra verde, 2006

Strata XV, 2009

Bruma T/Bruma Q/Bruma R, 2014

Olga de Amaral

until 29th October

Lisson Gallery

27 Bell Street

London

NW1

Sunday, 23 October 2022

Kwon Young-Woo

Kwon Young-Woo - Untitled, 1987

I enjoyed the synchronicity of this exhibition having only recently learnt about hanji and the many applications that Korean artists and craftspeople put this variety of paper to at the Korean Cultural Centre in August (here). This is the first solo show of the work of Kwon Young-Woo (1926-2013) in the UK, who made hanji paper the material and the subject of his work. As a fellow artist working in paper I was intrigued to see more of what the artist had to offer technically and learn more of the Korean aesthetic and culture in which he worked. Young-Woo studied Oriental painting in Seoul in the 1950s, exploring abstraction with Chinese ink before deciding on hanji paper made from mulberry trees as his preferred medium. Youg-Woo was part of the meditative Korean Dansaekhwa art movement of the 1970s whose work was abstract, monochrome and meditative taking into account the relationship between the materials, creation and the audience. What struck me about these artworks were the large scale initially, as some rivalled Matisse's huge, collaged papercuts in size. The next thing noticeable to the viewer as you approach and inspect is Young-Woo's disruption and physical manipulation of the paper medium and surface as part of his practice. He applies ink to the reverse of the paper so that it bleeds through to the front of the paper creating a subtlety of tone. He also layers paper upon paper, uses a knife to slice the paper, and then fingers to tear, glue, and puncture the surface, as well as scraping and pushing the wet surface to create textural smudges, exploiting the potentiality of the medium. This exhibition was particularly inspirational in terms of techniques for me, and I look forward to experimenting with certain techniques to see how far I can expand and push my own repertoire.