Imperfect Surface: Exhibition Catalog

dieu donnĂŠ paper invitational

Imperfect Surface Zak Kitnick, Andy Mister, Jessica Rankin, Alan Reid, Casey Ruble, Alyson Shotz

Dieu DonnĂŠ Paper Invitational

Imperfect Surface March 5 - April 12, 2014 Zak Kitnick Andy Mister Jessica Rankin Alan Reid Casey Ruble Alyson Shotz Curated by Bridget Donlon

Director’s introduction

by Kathleen Flynn

This exhibition offers an opportunity to consider the relationship between an artist and his or her materials.

Highlighting artists with an affinity for working with paper, Bridget Donlon has offered each a new perspective on a core medium through the introduction of handmade paper.

While the hand and handmade are valued in the creation of works of art, the inherent distinctness of handmade paper presents both challenges and rewards. In conversation with Studio Collaborators Amy Jacobs and Lisa Switalski, papers have been created that specifically embrace and even stimulate responses in each artist’s work, and all have uniquely responded to the unpredictability of the paper.

With a thoughtful eye, Bridget has brought together six artists with a broad range of creative practices, and has encouraged each to find something new in his or her work with Dieu Donné paper. Approaching the medium with diverse goals, each artist has achieved work(s) that are true to his or her practice and at the same time intuitively react to the unforeseen nuances of the paper. At Dieu Donné new ideas flourish through experimentation and by embracing surprising results. I am thrilled that Zak Kitnick, Andy Mister, Jessica Rankin, Alan Reid, Casey Ruble, and Alyson Shotz have eagerly explored our medium, and I want to thank the artists for their support and for sharing their unique works with our community. I’d also like to thank Bridget Donlon for her insightful approach to this project, and for so successfully rising to the challenge of experimentation herself in the development of Imperfect Surface.

Making paper: The pursuit of something real

by Lisa Switalski

While the main thrust of the programming at Dieu Donné involves challenging artists to engage with paper in the wet process, another part of what we provide is custom paper, made in batches to the artists’ specifications. In the two years that I have been Production Manager here, the studio has created an enormous range of sheets, all with the artists’ aesthetic desires and technical specifications in mind. From five-foot-long watermarked sheets to vermillion and sky-blue tissue-weight paper for typewriters, we provide the solutions artists are often unable to find anywhere else.

Sometimes our mail contains little scraps of a beloved but extinct paper, and we sit and try to decipher its secrets from its feel and surface, or offer new alternatives. Other times, it’s back to the studio when a color is just a little too violet, or a sheet not quite crispy enough. It is a pure pleasure to arrive at a paper that achieves (or exceeds) an artist’s expectations. Imperfect Surface was about inviting artists to explore this side of Dieu Donné. By asking artists to create a work in response to one or more of the sheets we chose specifically for them, we hoped to introduce them to the possibilities in the paper we produce. It has been fascinating to see which paper the artists selected from those provided, hear how the paper itself informed their processes, and finally, see the results installed in the gallery.

Education is another integral part of the mission here at Dieu Donné, and involves demonstrating the techniques used in the wet studio as well as sharing the mechanics and history of papermaking itself. Engaging a new audience is a relatively easy task: The transformation of a seemingly pure liquid into a solid, plants into pulp, the ease with which anyone can pull their first sheet – one of these aspects is sure to grab the attention of the even the most skeptical of observers. When we pass around coffee filters, tea bags, or sheets of abaca, cotton, or iris paper, we are also introducing a global history of a medium that stretches back over 2,000 years, with ties to science, culture, and art. Revealing the mesmerizing aspect of a quotidian material is something that never gets old, no matter how many times we explain that no, nothing else is needed to hold those sheets together, just pulp and water.

Beyond these initial revelations, this rich history, and the myriad ways to customize each batch of paper, sometimes

people still wonder if all of the effort required to practice this time-consuming craft is worthwhile. Our easiest way of putting this issue to rest, of course, is showing off the work on the walls here at Dieu Donné, as with the exhibition Imperfect Surface.

But I also would offer another, more personal reason, to this list. I invest myself in this medium and process because to me, paper is something real. It is real in the way those who love to cook find slicing an onion and caramelizing it to a brown sweetness real. Somewhere within all of the activities going on here day by day – the happy chaos of brainstorming ideas with a new artist, delving into the archive decades deep for advice, leading tours of highly excitable kids on field trips – I still find it. Reaching into a vat, and quietly forming sheets, one by one, the antidote to all the words, words, words, in our heads every day. There is an elegance to distilling a task down to its essential movements, and satisfaction in having this synchronicity evident in the results that continues to reward me as a maker.

Working in such an esoteric medium as hand papermaking, whose continuing existence in this country was saved from obsolescence by literally one man (a fascinating character by the name of Dard Hunter), involves a rather unique combination of determination, devotion, and, perhaps, obsession. Witness a quote from the man himself, from By His Own Labor: The Biography of Dard Hunter by Cathleen Baker:

As you know I am constantly working on the subject of PAPER and I daresay I will continue this pursuit until the last breath.

To those who haven’t been seduced by paper, aspiring to this level of devotion is likely to be viewed as insanity. I see in Hunter’s statement my huge debt to him and those who came after, as well as a provocation and a reason to go forward. I am lucky to, in some small way, have contributed to this stubborn refusal to let this tradition die, and I push forward with other artists in another line of inquiry: Not why continue, but what next? Each time we head back into the studio with our aprons and boots, we pursue the answer.

Studio Collaborator & Production Manager Lisa Switalski pulling a sheet of paper in the Dieu DonnĂŠ wet studio.

Zak Kitnick In his regular artistic practice, Zak Kitnick makes use of found commercial imagery, factory made objects, and industrial production processes.

A key factor in the creation of Kitnick’s work involves allowing the means of production to dictate quality. In one body of work, the artist prints images from 1990s decorative culinary posters — cheese wheels and variations of chili peppers — on large-format steel panels using a highdefinition digital printer that prints UV-cured ink directly to the substrate. This process requires many trial pieces before arriving at the works’ desired aesthetic.

Using the same printer and imagery on more intimately scaled paper, the artist printed on imperfect sheets from a production order, colloquially referred to as “seconds” or “thirds.” These imperfections can range from imperceptible imbalances of fiber to more visible deformities such as holes in the sheet or spots of mold, as with one paper the artist used. In these pieces, several sheets of paper were printed, cut down, and recombined to create a new, Frankenstein-ish sheet of paper in the same original dimensions.

Zak Kitnick was born in 1984. He received a BA from Bard College and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. His work has been exhibited at galleries in New York City and Europe, and at the institutions Artists Space, Socrates Sculpture Park, and Queens Museum of Art, and will be included in an upcoming group exhibition at MoMA PS1. The artist is represented by Clifton Benevento.

Left: DD/AIDO/USA/C1, 2014 Direct to substrate print on handmade paper 24 x 18 inches Right: DD/AIDO/USA/C2, 2014 Direct to substrate print on handmade paper 24 x 18 inches Courtesy of the Artist and Clifton Benevento, New York

Compilation (Winter Version), 2014 Carbon on paper 6 drawings, 14 x 9 inches each

Courtesy of the Artist

Andy Mister Andy Mister’s drawings in carbon faithfully recreate found images that have been cropped and combined together in a suite. Normally, Mister works on commercially produced paper with a smooth, consistent surface. The sheets of archival cotton-abaca mix paper, pigmented and metal dried to mimic the appearance of newsprint, have irregularities that disrupt the otherwise perfect gradients.

The artist has an archive of digital images that have been pulled from magazines, auction catalogs, books, the Internet, or friends’ Facebook profile pictures. These images are filed on a computer hard drive according to personal classifications such as “Manson Family”, “Album Covers”, and “Americana”, resulting in his own visual lexicon.

Compilation (Winter Version) features one image each from six different files, referencing the disconnected way we receive visual information through social-media feeds like Instagram. The six images in the series are of the Theater of Cruelty philosopher Antonin Artaud, the site of the Battle of Verdun, actress Jane Birkin, a White House chandelier, Karen Carpenter, and lyrics by The Dead C, a noise rock band from New Zealand.

Central to Mister’s work is Duchamp’s idea of the Creative Act, where the viewer plays a significant role in the artwork.

Mister assembles a group of images that follow the artist’s own categorization and narrative, but the threads between them are open to the viewer’s interpretation.

The viewer completes the piece, projecting his or her own understanding of the images onto the work.

Andy Mister is an artist and writer. His artwork has recently been exhibited at SPRING/BREAK, Brian Morris Gallery, Lesley Heller Workspace, City Without Walls, and Geoffrey Young Gallery. He has been an artist in residence for the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and Lyons Wier Gallery. His first book, Liner Notes, was published in 2013 by Station Hill.

An artist book, Heroes & Villains, is forthcoming from The Cultural Society. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Jessica Rankin

No stranger to alternative materials, Jessica Rankin is perhaps best known for her works in fabric. Using layers of sheer, sumptuous organdy and embroidery, she makes works that incorporate mapping, language, and memory.

More recently, the artist has been experimenting with text written on an antique typewriter.

Rankin collects language — her own personal writing, overheard comments, fragments from books — as found media. The typewritten texts are then cut up into individual words, providing a key material in her works. The words are regrouped and assembled according to intuition. The process recalls automatic-writing experiments of the Surrealists, invoked by guided chants or séances, giving the artwork a spiritual, otherworldly basis.

For the diptych in Imperfect Surface, these poetic writings were collaged onto thick, watercolored paper of cottonabaca mix. The abstract fields of the diptych could be read as interpretations of water or the night sky, not the mirror image of each another, but two sides of the same surface.

Jessica Rankin was born in 1971 in Sydney, Australia, and lives and works in New York. She has participated in numerous group exhibitions in the US, Europe and Australia, including the International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Cartagena, Colombia, and Landscapes of the Mind at Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA. Recent solo exhibitions include MoMA PS1, Savannah College of Art & Design, and White Cube, London. Her work was featured on the Art21 Season 5 segment Systems.

Problem of Ideals. Well, please. 2014 Graphite, ink, typewriter ink, glue, and handmade paper 22 x 30 inches each Courtesy of the Artist and White Cube, London

Top: Hermes, 2014 Watercolor and cut paper on handmade paper 20 x 18 inches Bottom: Artemis, 2014 Watercolor and cut paper on handmade paper 20 x 18 inches Courtesy of the Artist and Lisa Cooley, New York

Alan Reid Using a variety of sheets of Dieu Donné handmade paper, Alan Reid created collages that are titled for Greek gods — Hermes and Artemis — but also have counterparts in luxury brand names.

There is a consistency of style in Reid’s work that evokes certain eras: the gilded elegance of Art Deco or the cool chic of 1970s Halston. The specificity is not contained, eluding the viewer’s ability to pinpoint exact references. His paintings and works on paper appear to be concerned with surface and aesthetic appeal, the intersection of fashion and art with aspirational subject matter. They often feature aloof, modelesque women, and include intellectual references to philosophers, filmmakers, and musicians, and text in typefaces favored by hip designers.

Together, the body of work brings to mind someone’s elegant grandmother, or a friend with expensive tastes and good luck at estate sales. In all, it a shorthand for a certain level of class, taste, and education. It isn’t art about fashion, it is art about semantics, attempting to intellectualize the unintellectual, or bring grace, beauty, and sensuality to hardedged philosophy.

Alan Reid was born in 1976 in Texas and currently lives and works in New York. He holds degrees from the University of North Texas and the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland. Recent solo exhibitions include An Absent Monument at Mary Mary, Glasgow; Patricia Low Contemporary, Gstaad; and A Palazzo, Brescia, Italy. In 2013 he curated the group exhibition Air de Pied-à-terre for Lisa Cooley, the gallery that represents his work. Reid was included in the second edition of Phaidon’s Vitamin D.

Top: The shouting of the men, the shrieking of the women, the lamentations of the children, the shooting of revolvers and the crashing of windows all made a perfect pandemonium, 2014 Silver pigmented abaca paper 5 7/8 x 7 5/8 inches Center: At once the house became a sort of shrine, 2014 Silver pigmented abaca paper 8 x 6 inches Bottom: He was again attacked, the police looking on, 2014 Silver pigmented abaca paper 5 7/8 x 7 7/8 inches Courtesy of the Artist and Foley Gallery, New York

Casey Ruble With the curiosity of an anthropologist, Casey Ruble creates work that is interdisciplinary and spans classification. Her process begins with research into particular historic events, and then visiting real locations central to those narratives. To provide the imagery for her meticulous paper collages, she takes extensive photographic documentation where she is attuned to “mundane, present-day narratives” to capture its current identity, rather than attempting to find evidence of the location’s past.

A recent series explored sites in New Orleans of former orphanages, disinterred cemeteries, and locations where murderers have hidden the bodies of their victims. The works in Imperfect Surface are from a series on race riots and Underground Railroad way stations in the Northeast, here in particular the Tenderloin District riot of 1900, which occurred in the same area of Manhattan where Dieu Donné is situated today.

The sites explored in this series are Port Authority (site of an instigating event), a Mexican restaurant (on the same block as an involved police officer’s home), and a part-residential, part-commercial building (where an 18 year old was rescued from an angry mob). The titles are taken from a New-York Tribune story published on August 16, 1900. When Ruble visits these sites, she absorbs the atmosphere of the setting, which is often completely unidentifiable with the original incident. The resulting imagery, in the artist’s words, “tells a story about a present that’s unmoored from its past but never perfectly free from it.”

The photographic works are translated into line drawings, and then into cut paper collages. Ruble has a draftsman-like approach to mapping out an image, with the problem-solving process of working with a physical medium, like a sculptor with a block of marble. Each element of the image ends up carrying equal weight: Every detail — down to the tiny slats of a venetian blinds or the velvet rope of a stanchion — is hand cut and collaged using little more than an X-Acto knife, a pair of tweezers, and double-sided adhesive film. In other works, she uses an evocative color palette, but for Imperfect Surface, the works were created using a custom-produced, thick abaca with silver pigment. The resulting pieces resemble a printmaker’s etching plates, displaying a heft and flatness that belies the delicate intricacies of the paper.

Casey Ruble is from eastern Montana and currently resides in New Jersey. She received a BA from Smith College and an MFA at Hunter College. She teaches at Fordham University and has worked as a freelance critic for Art in America. Ruble is represented by Foley Gallery in New York City, which presented her work at VOLTA NY in March 2014. Recent solo shows include Disarmed at Foley Gallery and The Offing at Foundation Gallery in New Orleans. Her work is included in the 2013 Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas, by Rebecca Solnit and Rebecca Snedeker. Ruble is a 2013 recipient of the New Jersey Council on the Arts Fellowship.

Alyson Shotz Alyson Shotz depicts natural and scientific phenomena in common but seductive materials such as glass, wire, or mirrors. Her work explores these systems using a wide range of materials, and often reapproaches certain themes in different media.

For Imperfect Surface, the artist worked with fresh sheets of heavy cotton paper. She wet and re-formed them to create a series of five sequential sculptures. The pieces are light and delicate but look like stone or ceramic. Though the forms give the appearance of improvisational origami, they are produced by a very specific movement to re-create a spontaneous act. The movement is precise and planned, created in one fluid movement — otherwise the paper becomes corrupt if further manipulated.

Titled Progression, the series reveals a development of form, from smooth elegant folds to frenetic crumpling.

While each piece is a work in itself, together they read as moments of a creative action in process, like Eadweard Muybridge photographic stills of a body in motion. In this case, the culmination of the piece is a crumpled ball of paper, the part that gets tossed in the trash. It is a humorous conclusion, but ultimately parallels the artistic process of trial and error, experimentation, and exploration.

Alyson Shotz received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from the University of Washington in Seattle. In 2012, she was the Sterling Visiting Professor in the Department of Chemical and Systems Biology at Stanford University. Recent solo exhibitions include Alyson Shotz: Fluid State (Indianapolis Museum of Art) and Alyson Shotz: Ecliptic (Phillips Collection, Washington, DC). Later this year the Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College will present Force of Nature, featuring new and recent work. Shotz has also had solo exhibitions in New York City, Tokyo, Stockholm, Dallas, and Columbus, Ohio. Shotz’s studio is based in Brooklyn and she is represented by Derek Eller Gallery.

Progression, 2014 Folded and crumpled paper in five parts Variable dimensions

Courtesy of the Artist and Derek Eller Gallery, New York

Exhibition Dieu Donné Paper Invitational Imperfect Surface March 5 –April 12, 2014 Opening reception: Friday, March 7, 2014, 6–8 pm Exhibition publication written and designed by Bridget Donlon, unless otherwise noted.

Dieu Donné Board of Directors and Staff Susan Gosin, Founder & Co-Chair Martina Batan, Co-Chair Samantha C. Smith, Co-Chair Max Munn, Treasurer Ken Hudes, Secretary Sue Ann Evans James Selfe Sylvia Shepard Kathleen Flynn, Executive Director Paul Wong, Artistic Director Bridget Donlon, Program Manager Amy Jacobs, Studio Collaborator & Education Manager Louisa Rorschach, Gallery Assistant Lisa Switalski, Studio Collaborator & Production Manager

Dieu Donné Dieu Donné is a non-profit contemporary artist workspace dedicated to the creation, promotion, and preservation of new art made using hand papermaking techniques.

The organization’s primary services and programs are devoted to working with mid-career and emerging artists through collaborative residency opportunities to develop new, innovative methods of papermaking within the medium and the greater world of contemporary art. These programs provide a significant educational opportunity for contemporary artists by engaging them actively in the approaches to hand papermaking that Artistic Director Paul Wong has developed through collaborations with artists since our inception in 1976. Located in New York City, Dieu Donné houses a professional papermaking studio as well as a gallery, archive, and administrative offices.

Support for Dieu Donné The artistic and educational programs at Dieu Donné are made possible with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; and Foundation support including: Lily Auchincloss Foundation, Milton & Sally Avery Arts Foundation, Inc, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Cowles Charitable Trust, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The Minnow Fund, The New York Community Trust, The Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts and The Partnership Fund for New York City along with major individual support.

Dieu DonnĂŠ 315 West 36th Street New York, NY 10018 t 212 226 0573 f 212 226 6088 www.dieudonne.org residencies.dieudonne.org