Cut @ Vincent Price Museum

We’ve all received the email footnote, “Please consider the environment before printing this” as a reminder to examine contemporary society’s excessive consumption of paper. Cut takes an opportune look at artists who snip, slash, and sliver different forms of the ubiquitous medium (one that has been used for art-making since second century China) as their mode of artistic production.

Using Chinese iconography in a very different way than they did back in the day, Pepe Mar fervently snipped photos from Asian travel magazines and incorporated “manipulated paint,” fashion photography, and artificial hair extensions to create colorful and whimsical collaged sculptures entitled Toro Cojo and Louder Than Words.

Obsession seemed a recurring theme in Cut. Detailed handiwork in Yuken Teruya’s Notice-Forest (www.grazo3.at) was juxtaposed by the artist’s comment on conservation and consumerism as he showed a painstakingly incised little tree, cut from a shopping bag and then housed inside it. And the elaborate nature of Theresa Redden’s Cone, Cube #3, and Cylinder #3 indicated infinite patience (or, conceivably, manic fixation) on the artist’s part via her tiny, beautiful objects made of meticulously symmetrical woven strands of white paper.

Shadow and absence were given import in several artists’ works, as in Leigh Salgado’s Mirror Mirror, where lingerie imagery made of ink, burned paper, and incisions alluringly conversed with the walls behind the work. Chris Naptrop’s Landing Nowhere Else was placed behind a corner wall, which seemed a technical or lighting choice, but somewhat limited the viewer’s ability to fully engage with the airy and sumptuous large-scale installation’s cast shadows and delicate drips created with sparkly paint and green tea.

Perhaps the most compelling works in the exhibit were Lecia Dole-Recio’s Untitled and Eva Struble’s Poble Nou wall, winter (vines), where both artists utilized complex collage and painting techniques. Dole-Recio’s subtle palette, versus Struble’s more vibrant one, anchored the show with their large and stunning works. Museum director Karen Rapp made judicious choices in organizing Cut, an engaging “slice” of work by seventeen diverse artists.

(Published in The Magazine, 2008)