You have been to galleries and museums before where you questioned the materials an artist used. In this day in age we are concerned with what is indestructible and long-lasting. We are rejecting printed media for browsing a screen on a tablet whose inner workings remains a mystery to one who holds it. Anxiousness and fear are at a high as we begin to feel overwhelmed and fragile due to our ever evolving surroundings. When an artist takes a delicate medium such as paper to create art, great care is taken with attentiveness to it’s delicacy. Peter Callesen’s paper cuts are beautiful in their fragility and how they express how a blank medium can be “loaded”.
“My paper works have been based around an exploration of the relationship between two and three dimensionality. I find this materialization of a flat piece of paper into a 3D form almost a magic process – or maybe one could call it obvious magic, because the process is obvious and the figures still stick to their origin, without the possibility of escaping.
I find the A4 sheet of paper interesting to work with, because it is probably the most common and consumed media and format for carrying information today, and in that sense it is something very loaded. This means that we rarely notice the actual materiality of the A4 paper. By removing all the information and starting from scratch using the blank white 80gsm A4 paper as a base for my creations, I feel that I have found a material which we all are able to relate to, and at the same time is non-loaded and neutral and therefore easier to fill with different meanings. The thin white paper also gives the paper sculptures a fragility which underlines the tragic and romantic theme of the works.”
– Peter Callesen, Artist
My Name Is Reb 