Showing the versatility of paper as an artistic medium
2023-05-17 to 2023-06-01
2023-05-17 to 2023-06-01
Art+ Shanghai Gallery is hosting Sabrina Jauffret's solo exhibition "Memory & Metamorphosis," which delves into the French artist's obsession with paper, and showcases pieces made through radical, frequently unforeseen transmutation.
The exhibition displays the versatility and possibility of paper as an artistic medium that has been cut, shaped, painted, sewn, and even embroidered. Jauffret treats paper as what it is, and shows us that it can be an art form in its own right, rather than simply a material to draw or write on.
Her exploration of paper began in 2011 when she discovered bamboo paper-making in Vietnam. As she lived and traveled around the world, Jauffret made several attempts to connect with the medium of paper on a practical and conceptual level. She then came across the Japanese techniques of Washi paper making.
However, a formal immersion in the possibilities of the medium and a commitment to paper-making occurred only in 2021.
"Stairway to Heaven – A Lot Can Happen in Year" (2023)
"Let's Keep It Together" (2022)
To create her paper works, Jauffret laboriously follows the steps of the paper-making craft from handling the wood fibers, soaking, cooking, and separating them to preparing paper pulp, making glue, and preparing the mixture that will eventually turn into paper once molded and dried.
For the artist, making her own paper is not merely an act of manipulating raw material, but each step of the process is the act of experiencing art itself – a balance between controlling and letting go, intervening and taking a step back, doing and being, becoming and unbecoming.
"I want to give a voice to the paper, and show how the paper can have a power, so powerful that sometimes I just cannot control it," Jauffret said. The artist, on one hand, manipulates the paper, while at the same time she let it go, allowing the time and the environment to determine the outcome.
She piles hundreds of sheets of paper to count and capture the lapse of time in the work "Layers of Time," and incorporates ink in her paperwork of black and white palette to imply people's collision and connection.
In her latest work, she uses blood-red threads, either neatly aligned or tangled in a mess, which run through the pristine white paper, to reminisce of people's conversations of understanding and misunderstanding, symbolize memories that are lost and found, and pay tribute to the life vibrancy.
Exhibition info:
Date: Through June 1
Venue: Art+ Shanghai Gallery
Address: L207, 99 Beijing Rd E.
北京东路99号L207