Artist Statements: Elmira College Art Faculty Show 2023

Aaron Kather On Collage The French word “collage,” (literally “a pasting,”) entered the English language in 1919 to describe an emerging art form where paper and other materials were pasted onto a rigid support. Twentieth-century artists from virtually every major post-Cubist art movement made collages, using the medium to illustrate narratives, to make political statements, to bring attention to environmental causes, to hold a mirror up to popular culture, to critique capitalism, and to create new aesthetic styles. While I am interested in all of these approaches, I prefer making aesthetically driven, abstract collages in the tradition of artists such as the Dada artist Kurt Schwitters and the abstract expressionist Robert Motherwell, over the imagery-based styles of artists like the surrealist Max Ernst, the pop artist James Rosenquist, or the conceptual artist John Stezaker.

I gravitate towards abstraction not because I dislike beautiful images, but because beautiful images feel too precious to alter. Someone else’s imagery must undergo a certain degree of deconstruction before it can be transformed into a work of art that I can honestly consider my own. To make an abstract collage, I begin by mining magazines, newspapers, flyers, and other printed paper materials for shapes, colors, lines, patterns, or textures. Playing with these elements becomes a form of drawing: the gesture of the artist’s hand can be seen in the rough edge of torn paper, or in the smooth edge of paper cut with scissors; shaping each scrap of paper becomes an exercise in mark-making; and moving each piece around before gluing it down is a way of creating compositional studies, akin to thumbnail sketching. Sometimes I use my collages as inspiration for paintings, drawings, or digital artworks, but at other times I am content to let them exist for their own sake.

Working with whatever disposable materials can be found freely is an important aspect of the collages I have included in this show, for two reasons. First, the limiting nature of this type of material forces responsive and inventive thinking that starkly contrasts with the overwhelming nature of a blank canvas and limitless resources. The second reason relates to Marshall McLuhan’s famous quote that “the medium is the message,” a notion that has become a mantra for the contemporary art world. By repurposing materials otherwise destined for a landfill, collage becomes a protest against the wastefulness encouraged by consumer culture.