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Independent Curators International supports the work of curators to help create stronger art communities through experimentation, collaboration, and international engagement.

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The Paper Sculpture Show

Curated by Mary Ceruti, Matt Freedman, and Sina Najafi 

Lively and unconventional, The Paper Sculpture Show explores the nature of the art object and the identity of the artist. Twenty-nine international artists and artist teams, among them Janine Antoni, E.V. Day, Glenn Ligon, Cildo Meireles, Sarah Sze, and Fred Tomaselli, have each contributed a design for a three-dimensional paper sculpture that is only completed once it has been assembled by museum visitors. The artists’ designs, along with detailed instructions, have been printed on up to four sheets of paper per artist (most are on two sheets), each measuring 10 x 12 3/4 inches. At the onset of the exhibition, 500 copies per sheet of each work are stacked on work tables in the gallery, along with a limited set of tools—such as scissors, utility knife, tape and glue—to be used in the “transformation” of the work. Over the course of the exhibition, the visitors assemble their favorite pieces into paper sculptures right in the gallery. They are encouraged to allow their creations to remain on display after they leave (to be picked up after the show closes), to enable the exhibition to grow and change throughout its presentation. Subsequent visitors have the opportunity to see multiple versions of the same piece, each made unique by the hand of its fabricator.

Interactive, nonconformist and witty, The Paper Sculpture Show raises many questions, among them the following: Who is the author of these three-dimensional objects, the artists who designed them, or the museum visitors who assemble them? If numerous museum-goers utilize the same design, can one paper sculpture be better than another? At what point is a work complete? Which is the original and which the copy? Or, is there an original? Instead of providing answers, The Paper Sculpture Show suggests flexible definitions of a work of art that accommodate the variety of creative practices that now constitute contemporary art and culture. At the same time, The Paper Sculpture Show harks back to long and varied traditions. Precedents come from fine art, design, craft, and mass media including paper architecture, paper airplanes, paper dolls, origami, Mad Magazine fold-outs, exploded machine diagrams and pie charts, Fluxus mail art, the Surrealists' Exquisite Corpse games, and even the complex systems of workshops and apprentices of the Renaissance.

The projects in The Paper Sculpture Show exploit the nature of this traditional medium to explore contemporary topics. At a time when technology makes anything seem possible, the two works by Janine Antoni and David Shrigley counter this notion by providing exacting instructions for folding the “simple” medium of paper that are impossible to realize (though it’s fun to try!). Perhaps no other medium is better suited than paper to explore urgent issues such as disposability and obsolescence: Proof are Ester Partegàs’s “garbage can” into which one can throw papers listing things one doesn’t like and Patrick Killoran’s “watches” made to be worn and tossed out. Other artists address individuality in the face of mass production: Akiko Sakaizumi creates a plane of paper printed to look like human skin; Sarah Sze takes this opportunity to provide a hand-made coffee cup complete with exchangeable and varied color inserts to suggest different “flavors”—cappuccino, espresso, or latte.

The Paper Sculpture Show renders tangible the issues of authorship, craft, product versus process, and two dimensions versus three dimensions that have surrounded, and continue to pervade, artistic production. In this sense, one may say that there are either 29, or countless, artists in The Paper Sculpture Show, 29 works, or an infinite array.

The exhibition is organized by Cabinet, Independent Curators International (ICI), and SculptureCenter

Touring locations
SculptureCenter
Sep 7, 2003 – Dec 7, 2003
Regina Gouger Miller Gallery, Carnegie Mellon University
Sep 8, 2003 – Oct 14, 2003
DiverseWorks
Sep 11, 2003 – Nov 7, 2003
Contemporary Art Center of Virginia
Oct 30, 2003 – Jan 4, 2004
Hunter Museum of American Art,
Dec 6, 2003 – Feb 1, 2004
The Ballroom
Jan 16, 2004 – Mar 16, 2004
Gallery 400, University of Illinois at Chicago
Jan 12, 2004 – Feb 21, 2004
Orange County Museum of Art
Feb 14, 2004 – Apr 18, 2004
Salina Art Center
Jun 9, 2004 – Aug 4, 2004
Dunlop Art Gallery
Sep 11, 2004 – Oct 31, 2004
Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester
Feb 5, 2005 – Mar 27, 2005
Art Interactive
Feb 19, 2005 – Mar 27, 2005
Legion Arts
Mar 16, 2005 – May 8, 2005
Coral Springs Museum of Art
Jun 3, 2005 – Jul 29, 2005
University of Virginia Art Museum
Jun 18, 2005 – Aug 14, 2005
Purdue University Galleries
Oct 24, 2005 – Dec 4, 2005
Atlanta Contemporary Art Center
Jan 28, 2006 – Mar 25, 2006
Contemporary Arts Center Cincinnati
Aug 18, 2006 – Nov 5, 2006
Austin Museum of Art
Nov 18, 2006 – Jan 28, 2007
Kresge Art Museum
Jan 14, 2007 – Mar 10, 2007
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