Paper as Party

Paper as Matrix

Curated by Alexander Kroll

April 23-June 4 2024

Brianna Bass

William Bradley

Marc Horowitz

Dan Levenson

Sam Messer

Renée Petropoulos

Craig Taylor

Roger White

I believe in the magic of paper. I believe that in its slick/sandy/wet/dry/pulpy/smoothness there is the possibility of extraordinary transformation. Paper presents itself as a festival sized party of options. There is opportunity here. Depth of feeling and field and flavour. The chance to work with as serious or casual a spirit as one needs. Have the gall to be formal though. As in, take yourself and the opportunities of paper seriously. Wear a tie, a cape, a tuxedo. Try not to get ink on your fedora. But celebrate it when you inevitably do.

I didn’t intend aphorisms. I promise. I just want to talk personally about something that I love. As people, we touch or use paper constantly. In every corner of our field of action. Despite “paperless statements’ or “online preferences” the bank sends letters. The hospital reminds me of my cataract surgery countless times.

There is so much more than these tree products. Flax, plastic, even treated stone, papyrus, rice, cotton rags, endless plant fibers.

Paper as matrix is about becoming. Germinating. Like watercolour sinking into the page, paper can sponge-up notions and gestures. It can take it. Physical strength and delicacy commingle into a voluptuous flatness. Ultimately we can crumple, rumple, gouge or Incise, fold, crease, construct, shred, attach, collage, pierce, sew and bind, make endless drawings, build pulpy structures….

Paper is a mobius strip of potential.

-Alexander Kroll

Brianna Bass

Circle Dance, 2024

Watercolor and pencil on paper

11x11 inches (27.94x27.94 cm)

Brianna Bass

Synchrotron, 2024

Watercolor and pencil on paper

11x11 inches (27.94x27.94 cm)

Brianna Bass

Sympathetic Resonance, 2024

Acrylic on paper 

11x11 inches (27.94x27.94 cm)

Brianna Bass

Sleep, Love, Fight, 2024

acrylic on paper 

12x12in (30.5x30.5 cm)

William Bradley

A Cheaky, 2022

Construction paper and archival tape

12.5 x 12 cm (4.9x4.7 inches)

William Bradley

Old Country

2021

Construction paper and archival tape

13.7 x 13.2 cm (5.4x5.2 inches)

William Bradley

Remember, Remember, 2022

Construction paper and archival tape

12.4 x 12 cm (4.9x4.7 inches)

William Bradley

Candy, 2022

Construction paper and archival tape

13.2 x 12.5 cm (5.2 x 4.9 inches)

Marc Horowitz

Studio Drawing 1

pencil and oil on paper

9x12 inches

Marc Horowitz

Studio Drawing 2

Coloured pencil and oil on paper

9x12 inches

Marc Horowitz

Studio Drawing 3

pencil and oil on paper

9x12 inches

Marc Horowitz

Studio Drawing 4

pencil and oil on paper

9x12 inches

Dan Levenson

“Alois Ess”

oil and graphite on blotting paper

A2 format (16.5” x 23.5”, 42cm x 60cm)

Dan Levenson

"Juerg Ziegler”

oil and graphite on blotting paper

A2 format (16.5” x 23.5”, 42cm x 60cm)

Dan Levenson

“Marcel Hedinger”

oil and graphite on blotting paper

A2 format (16.5” x 23.5”, 42cm x 60cm)

Dan Levenson

“Donato Bliggensdorfer”

Medium: oil and graphite on blotting paper

Size: A2 format (16.5” x 23.5”, 42cm x 60cm)

Sam Messer

“Meeting a Stranger”

etching, silkscreen, letter press

collaboration with Sharon Olds

Paper size 26” x 39”

Sam Messer

"Magical Jews

etching ink spray paint, unique print 

plate size 16” x 20”

Sam Messer

Now is the time,

etching

plate size 10” x 10”

Sam Messer

My Real name

enamel on paper.

40” x 36” (approx)

Renée Petropoulos

“Colonia San Pedro de los Pinos,

November 2023,” 2024

8” x 8” (20 cm x 20 cm)

Beige

Renée Petropoulos

“Colonia Juarez, November 2023,” 2024

8” x 8” (20 cm x 20 cm)

Emerald Green

Renée Petropoulos

“Colonia San Pedro de los Pinos, November 2023,” 2024

8” x 8” (20 cm x 20 cm)

White Hole

Renée Petropoulos

“Colonia San Pedro de los Pinos, November 2023,” 2024

8” x 8” (20 cm x 20 cm)

Yellow Green

Renée Petropoulos

“Colonia San Pedro de los Pinos, November 2023,” 2024

8” x 8” (20 cm x 20 cm)

Red

Renée Petropoulos

“Colonia San Pedro de los Pinos, November 2023,” 2024

8” x 8” (20 cm x 20 cm)

Yellow and Brown

Craig Taylor

Untitled (The Ruins Lesson), 2023

graphite on paper

8 x 10 inches (20.32 x 25.4 cm)

Craig Taylor

Untitled (Dispersion) 2023

graphite on paper

8 x 10 inches (20.32 x 25.4 cm)

Craig Taylor

Untitled (On a path of Mould, Breathing) 2023

graphite on paper

8 x 10 inches (20.32 x 25.4 cm)

Craig Taylor

Untitled (AEN) ,2023

graphite on paper

8 x 10 inches (20.32 x 25.4 cm)

Roger White,

Paper Bouquet II, 2023

Watercolour on paper

11 x 14.5 in.

Roger White,

Sunflower I, 2024

Watercolour on paper

9 x 10.25 in

Roger White

Beach Study I, 2024,

Watercolour on paper

8.75 x 9.25 in.

Roger White

Studio with Yellow Stool, 2018

Watercolour on paper

10.25 x 12.25 in

Brianna Bass is a painter working in the lineages of geometric abstraction, color theory, and rule-based art. She earned her MFA from Yale School of Art in 2022, and BFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in 2013. She has presented in lectures at Pratt Institute and Yale University. She has exhibited work nationally and internationally at Missouri State University, Jeffrey Deitch Gallery (NY), Latchkey Gallery (NY), Noh-Art in Naples, Itay, and Tree Art Museum in Beijing, China. She co-founded Mineral House Media, an artist-run platform designed to enrich emerging artists' practices through exhibitions and an engaged online media archive. She currently resides in Hartford, CT.

William Bradley was born in York, England, and lives and works in Los Angeles. He earned a MA Fine Art in Painting from Wimbledon College of Art, UAL in 2008 and BA in Art and Design from York St John University in 2007.His works are included in the collections of Hood Museum of Art, Hanover, NH; Nelimarkka Museum, Alajärvi, Finland; University of the Arts London, UK; and the David and Indrė Roberts Collection, amongst other private collections.

Marc Horowitz is a Los Angeles-based artist. His multifaceted practice now encompasses painting, sculpture, video, and installation. Equal parts postmodern and post-internet, Horowitz’s work flattens the hierarchies of culture, politics, relationality, and history creating a diverse but singular visual universe.Horowitz received an MFA at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles CA in 2012. Horowitz has taught at the University of Southern California, and Otis College, and lectured at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), the Hammer Museum, Stanford University, and Yale.

Dan Levenson is a Los Angeles based visual artist working in installation, performance, video, painting, and sculpture. His work explores the relationship of art and freedom through the lens of art education. The paintings and objects he creates represent artifacts rescued from the ruins of an imaginary art school: the State Art Academy, Zurich (its initials in Swiss-German dialect are SKZ). As a painter, he follows the strict formalist pedagogy of his imaginary school: geometrically dividing metrically sized canvases to create abstract compositions. He expands on the story through performance, installation and video. Levenson has taught performative drawing lessons taken from the school’s curriculum at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, American Jewish University, Los Angeles, USC’s Roski School of Art, and the Saas-Fee Summer Institute in Berlin, Germany.

Sam Messer received his MFA from Yale University  and a BFA from The Cooper Union. Professor Emeritus at the Yale School of Art, Messer was Associate Dean at the Yale School of Art 2005-2018. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.; Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford; and DeCordova Museum, Lincoln, MA, among others. Messer has been awarded with a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant, the Engelhard Award, a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2019 he was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Provincetown Artist Work Center. His work is in many important public collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art; New York, Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Art Institute of Chicago; Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford; and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven. His paintings have been written about in The New York TimesNew York MagazineThe New YorkerThe Brooklyn RailBOMB MagazineArt in AmericaLA WeeklyArts MediaThe Boston Globe, and Boston Herald. Sam Messer lives and works in New York. 

Renée Petropoulos is a contemporary artist who currently lives in Venice, California. She has exhibited and performed her work internationally; most recently at the Wende Museum and the Broad Museum with her performance, Analog Among Nations: W&B, 2022 and OUTBURST: Conjugation 2, Athens Greece, 2022. She has received numerous awards and residencies including a 2023 Residency at SOMA, Mexico City, a IASPIS Fellowship in Stockholm 2019, a Santa Monica Artist Fellowship in the same year and Artist in Residence at the Palm Springs Museum of Art, 2019. Other grants include a California Arts Council Grant, a COLA grant, a Ford Fellowship, among others. She recently co-curated Swept Away Love Letter to a Surrogate 2022-2023, and is a founding member of FRDLP. This year she is curating a project with Vincent Johnson at the Mike Kelley Gallery at Beyond Baroque Literary Foundation. Her book, “Mouths and Nostrils” will be published this fall. Petropoulos is professor Emerita at Otis College of Art and Design in the Graduate Fine Arts.

Craig Taylor (Brooklyn, NY) held solo shows at: Fahrenheit Madrid Spain, University of Maine Museum of Art, CB1 Gallery Los Angeles, Sue Scott Gallery New York, La Montagne Boston, and Test:Showroom-Berlin. His work has also been shown in numerous group shows, amongst them are: Nathalie Karg Gallery New York, Essex Flowers Gallery New York, Below Grand New York, Peninsula Art Brooklyn, and Fred [London], Leipzig. His work has been written about in Art in America, ArtPulse, Time Out New York, The New York Times, Art in Print, and the Boston Globe. Taylor earned his BFA from Maine College of Art and his MFA from Yale University. Taylor is professor of painting at the Rhode Island School of Design. 

Roger White  earned a BA from Yale University and an MFA from Columbia University. White has been featured in exhibitions at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY; the Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art, Portland, ME; Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC; Boston University Art Gallery, Boston, MA; and Ballroom Marfa, Marfa, TX; among many others. He is the co- founder of the contemporary art journal and publishing imprint Paper Monument and is also the author of The Contemporaries, published by Bloomsbury in 2015

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