Paper Trails

Paper has been the de facto material for communication since the 1900s, but historical records show that humans used various versions of the now commonplace material as early as 104 A.D. If we fast forward to our present, hyper-online world, paper is quickly becoming a relic of a bygone age. Every day we conduct more of our lives online, and paper, despite its long-standing role as the preferred material for storing and disseminating information, increasingly loses its utilitarian value. Humanity’s collective shift toward digital media gives the medium of paper room to breathe, allowing us to consider the material's artistic and aesthetic possibilities with fresh eyes.

Paper Trails is a maximalist exhibition that traces the arc of printmaking as a distinct fine art discipline and calls attention to the discipline's influence on the development of contemporary art, particularly sculpture. The exhibition matches the work of internationally renowned printmakers from the Zane Bennett Contemporary Art collection with craft and design objects from form & concept’s emerging canon of artists. Works on paper by international superstars, such as El Anatsui and Robert Motherwell, and innovative sculptures from rising artists, such as Jiha Moon, and established names, such as Jami Porter Lara, confront viewers with a truly global perspective of contemporary art as they wander through the exhibition.

The exhibition's central question focuses on the meaning behind materiality. The similarities in palette and texture between artwork pairings make this conceit superficially evident. But if we follow the paper trail of critical discourse surrounding these artists, we discover material to be more than an aesthetic consideration—it is also a potent conceptual conduit. Take the pairing of Black Edge with Pearl and Jami Porter Lara’s signature Oaxacan ceramic vessels. Despite being composed of different materials, Anatsui and Porter Lara’s objects are dark in palette and fluid in form. Beneath their similarly rendered surfaces lie parallel yet unique stories of human migration told through the novel reworking of single-use products.

The pattern in El Anatsui’s print references his iconic series of monumental tapestries, which are woven from discarded bottle caps. Anatsui's depiction of this waste evokes the reality of environmental degradation in Africa that can trace its roots back to 19th-century imperialism. Porter Lara’s vessels rework the iconic but disposable form of the plastic bottle, scores of which are left along the US-Mexico border by people looking for a better life, into an elegant and timeless container for the human imagination. Together, Anatsui and Porter Lara’s works chronicle stories that reshape our understanding of the past and forecast our future.

Anatsui and Porter Lara’s pairing is just one of many dynamic “paper trails” in the exhibition, which aims to introduce people to new artists, explore the egalitarian nature of printmaking, and capture a particularly rich and textured moment in contemporary art, craft and design. The exhibition posits that paper has regained its status as the preferred method of mass communication, with the only difference being that the stories the medium records are visually rather than linguistically composed.

El Anatsui is known for his monumental metallic tapestries formed out of recycled materials. The Ghanian sculptor’s foray into printmaking similarly employs metal sheets to create multi-dimensional patterned prints out of vibrant colors and shapes, echoing the same vivacity and power of his larger works on a single plane.

Anatsui's clever use of recycled materials confronts the colonial history of Africa and presents it to the world in a captivating conceptual tapestry.

Jami Porter Lara's fastidious artwork title LDS-MHB-2LBR-0917CE-KS exemplifies an organizational system that allows the artist to identify exactly where she forged the clay for her work. Informed by her travels to and from Mexico, her elegant reimaginings of the disposable plastic waterbottle trace the migration of people across the Southwest borderlands.

Like Anatsui, Porter Lara's work uses consumer waste as a springboard for social inquiry.

Judy Chicago was in her mid-40s when she enlisted a multitude of artists and craftspeople to collaborate with her on the monumental installation piece The Dinner Party. The 48-square-foot artwork is permanently on view at the Brooklyn Museum and features a massive rectangular table with 39 elaborate place settings honoring 999 significant women. It’s a mixed-media magnum opus that doesn’t just add seats to the table—it builds a new one.

Signing the Dinner Party commemorates Chicago's installation piece. It's a sort of dinner invitation for women to join the historically male-dominated sphere of printmaking.

The emblematic Chinese takeout box is hardly an East Asian tradition. Rather, the beloved paper pails are an American invention inspired by Japanese origami and adopted by Chinese-American restaurants nationwide. Korean artist Jiha Moon sees artistic opportunities in this kind of cultural mingling.

Following Chicago's food themed Signing the Dinner Party, Moon demonstrates how the material culture of dining can influence other artistic disciplines.

While studying under Bauhaus icon Josef Albers, Richard Anuszkiewicz became enthralled with color as a vehicle for feeling. After finishing his studies at Yale, Anuszkiewicz began to extrapolate from the legacies of regionalism that he was steeped in as a boy and adapt the color theories of Albers to pioneer a new type of abstraction that would develop into what we now call op art.

Anuszkiewicz's minimal, chromatic work is a precise study of how color alters human perception.

Angel Oloshove's Sierra Nevada Sun encapsulates the artist's recent study of Southwestern skyscapes. Inspired by natural phenomena, Oloshove’s cloud-like sculptures are material distillations of subjective experience and symbolic bridges between literal and emotional landscapes.

Like Anuszkiewicz, Oloshove is interested in how color relationships alter human perception and elicit strong emotional reponses.

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Paper Trails: Exhibition Guide

Paper Trails

About the Exhibition

Featured Artworks

El Anatsui

Jami Porter Lara

Judy Chicago

Jiha Moon

Richard Anuszkiewicz

Angel Oloshove

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