Another look at paper art

In an art world that is increasingly overlapping with digitization, paper less or a paperless life is inevitable due to the increasing number of digital media works. Even without digitization, fine art has labeled works on paper as "lower class," as if they were of lower value than works on canvas, for example. The exhibition The Weight of Weightlessness: Rhymes and Rhythms of Paper examines that issue.

The breeze from the courtyard of the Dia.Lo.Gue gallery blows through the corridor lined with walls and half-open glass doors. He folds 12 paper "curtains" that hang in three neatly spaced columns occupying the aisle. One swings to the left and the other to the right. Also, the other curtains, in the installation "What do you think? Are angel wings heavy or light?", seem to be twitching, twisting. The swaying of each "curtain" casts a shadow that falls on the other "curtain", growing and shrinking with each movement. Prints of paint, applied with a plate on paper in a large number of layers using a printing press, piled up on each "curtain", seem to have come to life and flicker with the movements of the "curtain" ruffled by the wind. With each movement, the texture of colored layers deposited by manual graphic printing and crumpled and torn pieces of paper appear and disappear. I feel good, those angel wings are really easy. The swinging "curtain" is one of three works by Ivana Stojaković, which are jointly titled "What do you think?" Are angel wings heavy or light?".

Stojaković offers another work that depicts angel wings as heavy, massive and full. In the quadriptych "What do you think? Are angel wings heavy or light?", the four papers are also furrowed, creased and torn and as such reveal the fragile "nature" of the paper that can (not) withstand intense pressure. However, they are covered and insulated with massive, heavy glass. The quadriptych gives the impression of weight due to the intense color combinations of white, red, gold and blue, which are deposited and overlapped in a handful of printed layers in circular and linear rhythms.

These two works by Stojaković are part of the exhibition that lasts until March 31. Two more artists, Prila Tania and Irfan Hendrian, explore the "weight" and "weightlessness" of paper in different forms of work.....Three artists did not treat paper the way we usually treat paper as a medium for visual works. "In their work paper is both heavy and light, composition and rhythm are woven on and in the paper. Paper is used in unconventional ways - cut, shredded, then reassembled, printed and reprinted to the point of disintegration. The paper becomes the flesh from which they are shaped new forms, which immerse themselves in the space of the "Dia.Lo.Gue" gallery, wrote Roy Voragen in the curatorial notes of the exhibition. Voragen praised the persistence of the three artists who created their works themselves, without mastered craftsmanship and technical aids. "Through the winding road which they embarked on, showed us new perspectives on looking at paper, as well as the uniqueness that emerged when they collaborated," writes Voragen.

The three artists' exploration of paper's possibilities of "weight" and "weightlessness" really succeeded in giving new weight to paper as an artwork material. New opportunities are always there, as long as they are able to avoid the usual pitfalls.