SculptureCenter, in collaboration with Cabinet magazine and Independent Curators International, presents The Paper Sculpture Show, a traveling exhibition that premieres at SculptureCenter on September 7, 2003 and will tour to eleven United States venues through 2005 with additional venues to be announced. Curated by SculptureCenter Director Mary Ceruti, artist Matt Freedman and Cabinet magazine Editor-in-Chief Sina Najafi, The Paper Sculpture Show invites artists and audiences to explore the realm between two- and three-dimensional art in a new and inventive way. Twenty-nine artists have been asked to design a paper sculpture to be cut out and assembled using very basic materials. Visitors will be encouraged to "complete the artworks" by cutting out and assembling the sculptures of their choice. The exhibition consists only of sculptures assembled by the audience-collaborators-multiple copies of each artist's idea, each unique in its fabrication by an individual visitor. An exhibit design by Allan Wexler provides workstations and display areas made from single sheets of 4x8 plywood using cutting and folding techniques similar to those employed in the artworks.
In blurring the distinction between you and the artists, this exhibition poses a number of questions. At what point is a work of art complete? Who is the author of an object imagined by one person and completed by another? What is the relationship between two-dimensional image and three-dimensional object, instruction and inspiration, originality and repetition, mass production and the handmade? And, where do we locate failure or success in a project like this?
The open-ended nature of these questions and the answers they provoke have resulted in the staggeringly wide range of art projects included in the exhibition. Folded, cut, crumpled, and even burned, paper here proves itself to be a generous host capable of accommodating sculptures inspired by cultural examples as diverse as paper-doll books, Mad magazine "fold-ins," and exploded schematic diagrams. Using only this humble material, which is ubiquitous to the point of invisibility in everyday life, the artists in The Paper Sculpture Show offer a visually stunning, conceptually rich, and playfully hands-on exploration of artistic practice today.
