Cut Up/Cut Out

Ellen Noël Art Museum

July 19 – October 14, 2018

Curator: Carrie Lederer

 

Cut Up/Cut Out features approximately 100, 2-D and 3-D works by a dynamic roster of national and international artists who explore the practice of “cutting” in various ways – from cut paper to plastic to metal.

 

The art of cutting paper dates back thousands of years, with early artworks coming from 6th Century China. The artists of Cut Up/Cut Out explore the many methods of decorative piercing and cutting, but extend their media to include paper, cloth, metal, wood, rubber and much more. The transformative nature of cutting into and through a surface provides endless possibilities for converting the material from opaque to transparent, from flat to sculptural, from rigid to delicate, and from ordinary to exquisite. The artist might retain the plane of the surface and incise it to create lace-like imagery, or use thousands of intricately cut pieces to build a sculptural object or atmosphere. The process and precision required for this method of art-making is laborious, technically demanding, and always astonishing.

 

Odessa, July 2018