Flammarion

Georgia Russell, "The Story of Art" (2006)

October 2009 Datebook

In Retrospect: Ed Ruscha

In Museums

Narrative Threads

East London Looks East

Lean and Mean

Neville Wakefield

From Good Stock

Family of Mann

Design Digest

Own the Dream

Back to Art

Highly Polished

Movers & Shakers

Treasure Hunting

Heather Lemonedes

Digging In

A Match Made in Midtown

Star Ambitions

Also This Month

Kara Walker Kalup Linzy in New York Nigel Freeman on Selling African-American Art Slash: Paper Under the Knife Uncommon Courtesy Mary Reid Kelley in New York Three Artists Win MacArthur “Genius” Awards ShContemporary on Solid Footing, Despite Setbacks

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NEW YORK—After mounting "Radical Lace and Subversive Knitting" and "Pricked: Extreme Embroidery," the Museum of Arts and Design continues its "Materials and Process" series with "Slash: Paper Under the Knife," an exhibition examining cut paper in contemporary art, on view from October 7 through April 4.

The show includes sculpture; floor, wall and ceiling installations; small-scale cutouts; and cut-paper animation. The size and power of the works may shock, perhaps even more than the provocative subjects of Kara Walker’s silhouettes, which are among the pieces on view. Andreas Kocks, of Germany, has envisioned an 18-foot-wide explosion of black paper that mimics paint thrown against a wall, while the Brazilian Célio Braga fashioned funeral wreaths from paper flowers cut from instructions for prescription drugs used by him or his family and friends. In The Story of Art, 2006, Georgia Russell, of Scotland, has neatly snipped the pages of E. H. Gombrich’s canonical tome of that title. Still attached to their cover, the pages burst forth in an explosion of shreds.

Six artists are creating new site-specific works, which can be viewed in the process of installation during the first few days of the exhibition. The French-born artist Béatrice Coron, known for her intricate cut-paper creations, will be installing two, Heavens and Hells, which are part of a series loosely inspired by Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. "I think it’s the ordinariness of the medium that gives it its power when artists do something interesting with it," says mad’s chief curator, David McFadden.

"Sliced and Diced" originally appeared in the October 2009 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's October 2009 Table of Contents.