Featuring 3D collages made from Batman comics, sculptures carved from archaeology books, and massive archways built from recycled paperbacks, Art on Paper 2019 celebrates the fine art potential of an undervalued material.
Brian Dettmer
Encyclopedias Transformed into Dazzling, Dada-Inspired Sculptures
The title of artist Brian Dettmer’s Dodo Data Dada, showing at PPOW, sounds like cute alliterative nonsense until you realize it’s a clever description of the work on view: Sculptures made of old encyclopedias, a medium nearing extinction, with their pages of data carved into intricate photomontages reminiscent of Dada artists like Hannah Hoch.
Art on Paper Joins the Armory Week Fold
Despite Art on Paper’s name, the work on view at the first-time Armory Week fair includes as many different materials as at any other fair, with art created on paper and art inspired by paper on view.
Between the Sheets: Art and Books at The Hole
One of the most pleasant surprises to pop out of the August doldrums is Summer Reading at The Hole — particularly for the lemonade that the gallery has made out of its lemon of a space.
Carrying on a Political Absurdist Legacy
CHICAGO — Cartoonist Rube Goldberg (1883–1970) was best known for his depictions of “inventions” that imagined complicated contraptions with far too many moving parts built to solve the simplest of problems. These “Rube Goldberg machines” appeared in his work, and were used as devices to poke fun at the roundabout nature of American bureaucratic and political systems in the post-World War II era. Rube Goldberg’s Ghost, a large group exhibition on view at Columbia College’s small Glass Curtain Gallery (through May 4) features work by more than 20 artists who may very well be Goldberg’s companions in that they, too, enjoy laborious machinations with political undertones.