“The Page”
Curated by John Stezaker and Matthew Higgs

May 20 through July 16, 2010

Opening Reception Wednesday, May 19, from 6 to 8 pm

Tom Burr, Anne Collier, Shannon Ebner, Daniel Gustav Cramer & Haris Epaminonda, Wade Guyton, Richard Hawkins, Matthew Higgs, Judy Linn, Sara MacKillop, Michalis Pichler, Nick Relph, Tim Rollins & K.O.S., Paul Sietsema, Frances Stark, Dirk Stewen, John Stezaker, Rirkrit Tiravanija

“The use of the page in artists‘s books or for projects within the context of art magazines, for example, is an established genre. However, it is only rarely in this history that these uses of the page have become reflections on the nature of the book, the page or the manuscript itself, or on the particularity of a subjective encounter with this familiar –doubled - space.

“The Page” gathers together a number of recent artists’ works that constitute just such a reflection on both the use and the nature of the page – in its myriad forms. In these works, the page is not only a conduit of an image or an idea; it is also a mysterious object of attention in and of itself.

Perhaps it is only at this moment in history, when the page itself seems to be rendered potentially obsolete by the screen that artists have begun to find a renewed fascination for the physical particularities of the page or book form. Perhaps it is only this context of redundancy that has encouraged artists to dwell on these qualities overlooked in the ordinary passing encounter. There is pathos in this encounter with the stilled page. There is often a seemingly nostalgic, even lamenting quality, as if the book, magazine, newspaper, or musical score had already passed out of use and existed as a physical trace left behind in the process of dematerialization.

Against a background of the potentially lost or endangered physicality of communication, much of the work in the exhibition can be seen as forms of resistance to this process. The page, the pre-eminent site of appropriation and collage - one might say the space of origination of such practices - is fore-grounded here as the site for a return of these practices to their origins.”

– John Stezaker, 2010

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www.kimmerich.com/html/2010/the-page/index.html