Friday, September 6 at 6:00 PM
Exhibition opening!
In collaboration with Collage Philadelphia, the Athenaeum is pleased to present Paper Trails, an exhibition that explores, expands, and complicates understandings of collage art. Curated from an open call submission process, the exhibit features over sixty artworks, including selections by well-known Philadelphia artists Galen Gibson-Cornell, Jill Haas, and collaborators Jason Chen and Alex Eckmanlawn.
Paper Trails presents collage not simply as a fixed artform, but as a flexible and ever-evolving practice of defamiliarizing everyday imagery to radically new ends. By juxtaposing figures and objects, cityscapes and animals, abstractions and gestures, many of the works on view derive their power from the emergence of surprising visual combinations, whether chance or planned. Portraits and landscapes dissolve into dazzling geometric patterns, while film stills and commercial photographs transform, through processes of layering, superimposition, or digital manipulation, into dreamy optical illusions. Elsewhere, mixed-media paintings, the sculptural addition of found wood, and prints on handmade paper emphasize unexpected material choices.
Curators: S. Jenx, Deanna Black
Collage Philadelphia is a vibrant community celebrating collage in the City of Brotherly Love.
Sponsored in part by The Roger W. Moss Symposium Fund and Poor Richard's Charitable Trust
