Waterfalls & Spirit – Visual Paper Art at Haus des Papiers, Berlin
News General news
The new exhibition Waterfalls and Spirit begins with the vernissage on 27 October at the Museum Haus des Papiers. On display will be intimate artistic positions as well as, for the first time, theme-specific video and spatial installations. In addition to this year’s Paper Residency! fellows Harriet Groß, Ines Schaikowski, Jessica Maria Toliver and Rachel de Joode, new works by major contemporary artists such as Jorinde Voigt and Monica Bonvicini will be presented.
The impressive works of this year’s Paper Residency! fellows set the thematic framework of the exhibition. Harriet Groß wrests waterfalls from gravity, they circle, become eyes. While Rachel de Joode`s flowing, colourful forms evoke spatial irritation, Ines Schaikowski‘s work pushes strict, frozen lines into the room. Jessica Maria Toliver uses water as an information carrier to store intimate stories of rivers, cities and bodies in paper.
The material and studio scholarship Paper Residency! has been in existence since 2018. It is sponsored by the companies Hahnemühle, d’mage and Canon and offers artists the opportunity to work intensively with the material paper once a year in Berlin and Munich. Some of the works created there enter the museum ́s collection. The intensive works from this year’s residencies, including formats such as video and spatial installations for the first time, are now being shown publicly.
Hahnemühle Rice Paper 80 gsm ©Jessica Maria Toliver
The artistic exploration of water as the basis of life, as a medium of information, as an aesthetic impulse for flowing, melting forms and structures in paper is the focus of the exhibition “Waterfalls and Spirit”. It was curated by museum director Annette Berr, who remarks: “Ever wilder experiments emerge in the residencies. In the summer of 2022, the fellows went further than ever before. When we entered the room, it was almost unbearable what energies were there. And, as if they had made a silent agreement, the theme of water was quite hyper-present.”
Newly exhibited artists are Jenny Michel and Justine Laeufer. In addition, the exhibition offers visibility for practice-oriented research on paper as a material. Students of the Weißensee School of Art present textile and ceramic objects made of recycled cellulose from urban waste water, which were developed in the Greenlab research laboratory. Students demonstrate material possibilities and at the same time question personal and social boundaries.
The exhibition shows sculptural paper art by a total of 32 emerging as well as already internationally established artists.
