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COLLAGE ON VIEW
Through the Looking-Glass
at Spazio Nobile Studiolo in Brussels, Belgium through 18 July 2021. Through the Looking-Glass is the title of a novel by Lewis Carroll, in which Alice enters a fantastical world by climbing through a mirror. There she finds that, just like a reflection in a mirror, everything is reversed. In the same way, this series of collages shifts the viewer’s focus from the main subject towards the colored background. By reclaiming fragments of backgrounds from advertising and various visual sources, Audrey Guttman aims to investigate the other side of our visual culture, permeated by commerce, in order to return their original force to the colors used to attract the eye to the page. MORE
FROM THE ARTIST DIRECTORY
Immobilize Money
Paris, France. Olivier Gamblin, aka The Pop Surealist, creates collages using banknotes from around the world. His concept is to immobilize money, to desecrate it, denounce it, and demonstrate the fascination we have for money. The Pop Surealist reminds us that banknotes are just pieces of paper. MORE
FROM KOLAJ 32
The Collector Assembles
Collage artists are brilliant at collecting, interpreting, and rehabilitating print ephemera. Tim Harper does this with object material culture. “I collect things that I find interesting: scrap wood and metal, pieces of machinery, dried vegetation and flowers, anything I think has some visual potential. These become my library of materials,” wrote the artist. A portfolio of Harper's work appears in Kolaj 32. MORE
FROM THE ARTIST DIRECTORY
An Evocation of Ideas and Feelings
Lamy, New Mexico. Mark Petrick makes art founded in photographic and digital imaging technology utilizing collage strategies. For his recent project, An Alphabet (2020), a child’s alphabet primer served as the structure for twenty-six photo/graphic images brought together in a book. Each image includes a unique page from an antique manual from a Japanese Zen monastery photographed with a film negative of a letter from the deaf sign alphabet lit from underneath. MORE
CALL TO ARTISTS | DEADLINE 20 JUNE 2021
COLLAGE ON VIEW
Remedy of Anything
at McClain Gallery in Houston, Texas, USA through 10 July 2021. Donald Baechler’s 2-foot square collage painting, while not new to his oeuvre, lays out an indexical vocabulary which the artist has been developing for decades. Blooming flowers, a swan, a glass half-full (or half empty), a smile: each carries equal heft, mystery, and a dash of good humor. Baechler created these works during the pandemic with titles like Collector of Cures and The Window Wish. Viewers may find themselves contemplating the healing power of art-making when our future is so unknown. MORE
FROM KOLAJ 32
New Compositions of Textile Elements
First, Craig Upson composes an image in black-and-white that draws on historical sources and his own hand-drawn embellishments. “I break this new composition into value regions—and create a map that will guide the collage assembly process,” wrote the artist. Each fragment becomes a texture. A portfolio of Upson's work appears in Kolaj 32. MORE
COLLAGE ON VIEW
Nicola López: Haunted
at Albuquerque Museum in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA through 30 June 2021. Nicola López is the Museum's 2020 Visiting Artist. Her lobby installation, Haunted, features collaged, printed and hand-drawn elements on the wall to create a hybrid landscape in which geological and human-built features intertwine. This static landscape is inhabited by moving images projected directly over the wall-mounted collage. Since sunlight pours into the lobby area through large windows adjacent to the exhibition space, the projection is visible to varying degrees as light conditions shift throughout the day and seasons. Sometimes the projection is barely visible—and entirely ghostlike—while at other times it is stronger, the way that phantoms can seem most palpable in spaces of darkness. MORE
Recent Publications
JOIN KOLAJ INSTITUTE
Members of the Silver Scissors & Golden Glue Societies support the work of Kolaj Institute while receiving an item from Kolaj each month. Those who join before 30 June 2021 will receive The Money $how. LEARN MORE
BOOK
The Money $how: Cash, Labor, Capitalism & Collage
The Money $how juxtaposes contemporary artwork against fragments of history and literature as a way of showing how collage can help us deconstruct culture and understand the world differently. The book takes readers on a tour of late-stage capitalism. The book starts from the premise that money is an idea that shapes contemporary life and present works that invite viewers to consider cash, labor, and capital. Each contemporary artist in the book uses collage to unpack ideas about money and its influence on our culture. Artworks speak about Black wealth, immigrant remittances, and how mid-20th century advertising informs present-day attitudes. Artists collage dollar bills into flowers and mine material remnants to tell stories about home economics. MORE
Our goal with every issue is that Kolaj Magazine is essential reading for anyone interested in the role of contemporary collage in art, culture, and society. We not only hope you enjoy the articles and images in Kolaj #32, we hope it leads you to asking great questions.
CURRENT ISSUE
Kolaj #32
In the Kolaj #32's editorial, Ric Kasini Kadour writes, “I often find myself saying, Collage is powerful magic. The collage community often feels like we are off in our own private corner of the art world. We excel at sharing that collage magic with each other. How can we do better sharing it with the rest of the world?” Each issue of Kolaj Magazine shows how collage artists are making their way through the world. International in scope, we explore all aspects of collage and its impact on society and culture. MORE
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SPECIAL EDITION
World Collage Day 2021
In honour of World Collage Day, May 8, 2021, Kolaj Magazine is releasing a special edition of the magazine. The Special Edition is full of Cut-Out Pages and stories from inspiring collage artists. MORE
Note: The World Collage Day Special Edition is not included in a regular Kolaj Magazine subscription.
COLLAGE BOOK
Unfamiliar Vegetables: Variations in Collage
Unfamiliar Vegetables is a collection of collage where each of the fifty artists interpreted, in their own way, Carlotta Bonnecaze’s 1892 Carnival float design Familiar Vegetables. Project organizer Christopher Kurts observed, “Unfamiliar Vegetables is an experiment in controlled chaos….tiny variations within each artist’s creative sphere accumulate until the outcomes are as unique as the people creating them.” MORE
COLLAGE COMMUNITIES
The International Directory of Collage Communities
The 104-page book is a survey of collage networks, guilds, communities, and projects as well as online efforts and groups focused on collage research. For each community, the directory presents their key activities, mission, how to join, and a bit of their history. Copious images illustrate the book. MORE
BOOK
Radical Reimaginings
The curators of the 96-page book invited artists who use collage in their practice to put forward a work of art that offers a visual narrative that speaks to the unprecedented change unfolding in 2020. An essay by Ric Kasini Kadour reflects upon collage's unique ability to imagine new realities. Forty artists from nine countries and multiple Indigenous peoples—Salish-Kootenai/Métis-Cree/Sho-Ban, Tlingit/Nisga’a, Oglala/Lakota, and Seneca Nation—offer a variety of perspectives. The voices of Black, Latinx, Native, and white Americans mingle with those from Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Argentina, Canada, France, and Germany. Artwork is accompanied by a statement in which the artists describe how they want to reimagine the world. MORE
BOOK
Collage Magic
by Emma Anna
Part autobiography, part fantasy, Emma Anna’s vision of The New Old World (aka The NOW) fuses vintage ephemera with modern imaging technologies. Emma shapes this strange world by using the pen tool from Adobe Photoshop as her magic wand, in the process declaring herself to be a “collage magician”. Part artist book, part document of art making, Collage Magic, from La Casa Verde Editions, is Emma Anna’s journey through magic and art. MORE
BOOK
Revolutionary Paths
When the collage is presented in exhibition, it is often done so without the critical framework granted other mediums. In "Revolutionary Paths: Critical Issues in Collage", exhibition curator Ric Kasini Kadour presents examples of collage that represent various aspects and takes on the medium. Each work in the exhibition represents the potential for deeper inquiry and further curatorial exploration of the medium. MORE
BOOK
Cultural Deconstructions
Collage is unique as a medium in that it uses as its material artifacts from the world itself. To harvest those fragments, the artist must first deconstruct culture; they must select, cut, and remove the elements they do not wish to use and then reconstruct work that tells a new story. In "Cultural Deconstructions: Critical Issues in Collage", exhibition curator Ric Kasini Kadour presents examples of collage artists who are deconstructing identity as a way to critique culture. MORE
Our goal with every issue is that Kolaj Magazine is essential reading for anyone interested in the role of contemporary collage in art, culture, and society. Each issue of Kolaj Magazine is dedicated to reviewing and surveying contemporary collage with an international perspective. We are interested in collage as a medium, a genre, a community, and a 21st century art movement.
