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Indepth Arts News:
"Line With Paper: Anja Bruggemann, curator"
2005-08-06 until 2005-08-27
Ohio Art League
Columbus, OH,
USA United States of America
All artwork for the proposed exhibition requires paper: The making of and with paper by all three artists reflects different formal and conceptual sensitivities; however, a sincere relationship with the same material threads throughout each work. Paper demands respect yet craves to be useful; it is fragile, white, printed, drenched, thin, thick, layered, or constructed. The works’ beaten fibers are compressed and shaped into thick supports; thickly textured sheets are bound together and cut with sharp scissors; long strands are looped into endless scrolls. Handmade paper reflects the trauma of its making as well as the colors and scents its fibers once contained.
Then, paper becomes the structure on which other materials closely lie. Sometimes, a sheet’s damp fibers are crushed against a cut piece of wood, forever embossing an image. Or perhaps a stained receipt, dated and signed, becomes pinned and collected. Other works substitute functional material and meaning with printed images and restlessly running personal notations on paper. Paper becomes the essence, motor, and metaphor for making sense.
The final products are patient, sensual, lasting, cruel, romantic, lonely—and fibrous. Made visible and tangible, they need to be shared with others…need to be tamed and named and lived with every day. This essentially two-dimensional material will reach deeply into the exhibition space, confronting the viewer from the wall, the ground, as well as out of enclosures. All works refuse to be protected behind frames; instead, they expose their stacked and stitched, printed and practical surfaces and extend an invitation to be moved.
Curator Anja Brüggemann, holds many degrees, among them M.A., Fine Art Printmaking from the Camberwell College of Arts, London, England and M.F.A., Printmaking, from the Ohio State University where she still teaches. Ian Ruffino also received his MFA in Printmaking from OSU and Joe Immen is an MFA candidate in Printmaking at the Indiana University in Bloomington.
Brüggemann wrties:
“ ‘There is no bad weather—only bad clothing,’ my father used to say to me when I did not want to join my family’s daily walk. Every day, through every season, my parents demanded my brother, sister, and I go for a long walk with them: hikes through the countryside and strolls through the city, walking amongst fields and farms and wandering amongst shops and street cafés. We were clothed appropriately and back home for dinner. I found frogs and birds, walked through cut grass and snowflakes and picked up all kinds of wooden sticks for my large collection in front of our house.
Making my work is like going on a family walk. Every day, in all weather, I begin a scheduled routine of wandering. I still walk and work without a map. Whenever life becomes out of order, I ‘do my laundry’ or go for a walk; afterwards, my life appears sorted, folded, and well aired. Home is where I started from; home is my memory. I remember my family’s shared past. It informs my seeing and thinking and enables me to make visible a wide variety of textures. And on a bad day, I change my clothes, in case my father was right.”
Take a walk, stroll into the gallery in August and enjoy the wanderings of these three artists.
IMAGE
Ian Ruffino
At the Mahan Gallery in Columbus, Ohio
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