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FROM THE ARTIST DIRECTORY
Salvaged Lives
Champigny-sur-Marne, France. Sylvain Solaro uses photography as a raw material that he mixes with salvaged objects that he collects in an emotional way. He contradicts the sometimes serious aspect of old photographic portraits by placing them in a surrealist way in relation to incongruous materials. Solaro says of his work with these artifacts, “These old photos still stir me, I feel like I am bringing back to life these people who have now mostly disappeared.” MORE
FROM KOLAJ 34
Vakseen Opens a Gallery
In Kolaj 34 News & Notes, we report on Vakseen's new gallery that opened in North Hollywood, California, USA in September 2021. The gallery is the first Black-owned brick-and-mortar art space in the community. The artist's work has appeared on several television series and has been shown widely. Vakseen's work was featured in Collage Artist Trading Cards, Pack 5. MORE
COLLAGE ON VIEW
Comic Relief
Molly Zuckerman-Hartung at the Blaffer Art Museum in Houston, Texas, USA through 13 March 2022. "Comic Relief” is the first major museum survey dedicated to the work of the American artist, writer, and educator Molly Zuckerman-Hartung. Featuring over 100 artworks made across the past twenty years, this exhibition celebrates multiple dimensions of Zuckerman-Hartung’s punk-influenced aesthetic—tracing an expansive practice that spans assemblage, paintings and sculptures, drawings and prints, photographs, writing, and performance. MORE
COLLAGE ON VIEW
Décalage
Marion Baruch at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig Gallery in Leipzig, Germany through 28 January 2022. “Décalage” is the first comprehensive presentation of the artistic practice of the Jewish-Romanian artist Marion Baruch to the German-speaking world. The exhibition focuses on her latest sculptures for which she collected textile waste from the prêt-à-porter industry as well as related objects from the late 1960s that lean towards design. In addition, the exhibition introduces her 1990s avant-garde internet works, as well as the participatory projects realized later. These are works in which feminism and migration—against the background of “hospitality”—surface as central and recurring themes for the artist. Curated by Ilse Lafer and Noah Stolz. MORE
COLLAGE ON VIEW
Jesus of Western Avenue
Tony Fitzpatrick at Cleve Carney Museum of Art in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, USA through 31 January 2022. “Jesus of Western Avenue” is the final museum exhibition by world-renowned multimedia artist and celebrated Chicago resident Tony Fitzpatrick. The exhibition features more than ninety mixed media works, many of them new. These graphically rich and inventive works deliver messages and stories that reflect on the artist’s connection to Chicago, nature, his social and political concerns, and our shared changing reality. MORE
FROM THE ARTIST DIRECTORY
Elegance Counteracted
Santiago, Chile. Camila Jofré explores the female body as a whole; body and soul, subtlety and elegance counteracted with the strength and feminine power that become recurring research topics. Extrapolating feelings, sensations and experiences that generate a recontextualization of the feminine, of the story told or lived and that finally becomes her body of work. MORE
COLLAGE ON VIEW
Interlusion
Ginnie Gardiner at Carrie Chen Gallery in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, USA, through 4 January 2022. “Interlusion” presents selections from Gardiner’s “Artifact Color” collages and "Interlusion" paintings and highlights her mastery of opacity and translucency and exploration of visual perception and phenomenal transparency. Gardiner scaled-up the "After Color" collages into larger oil paintings, and by adding another layer of semi-transparent subject matter she evokes a sense of atmospheric, surrealistic landscape. MORE
Current Issue
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 34, we hope it leads you to asking great questions.
PRINT MAGAZINE
Kolaj 34
From Rockwall, Texas to Belarus to Dublin, Ireland, Kolaj 34 offers an international view of collage. In this issue we look at how the medium is being used to critique fashion advertising, build community, and investigate Black, Victorian spirituality. Writers wrestle with ideas about illusionary spaces, the psychology of the creative process, and concepts that expand our understanding of collage.
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
Kolaj 34 is automatically sent to Silver Scissors & Golden Glue Members of Kolaj Institute. These special members of Kolaj Institute support residencies, fellowships, publications, and traveling programs while receiving a piece of the collage community to their mailbox each month. LEARN MORE
Recent Publications
COLLAGE BOOK
Tissue Box:
A Pandemic Response
Boite à mouchoir: Une réponse à la pandémie. In Spring 2020, as the world was going into lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Quebec Collagiste Virginie Maltais felt a deep need for a point of reference. Her solution was a project that asked collage artists from around the world to make a collage using the top of a tissue box. "Small projects are important. You regain your courage and hope when you start and manage to finish something. There is no small project. We do big projects with lots of little steps. Step by step, we move forward. Together. And it is all of these small steps, together, that led to the creation of this book." Maltais worked with Kolaj Institute and Kasini House to produce a bilingual book about the project. MORE
COLLAGE BOOK
transitional MOMENTS
transitional MOMENTS: restoring equilibrium through the art of collage includes one hundred collages selected from over 2000 submissions created from 600 collage packets sent to artists around the world for World Collage Day 2021 by the Arizona Collage Collective. transitional MOMENTS "reflects our current state of uncertainty as we wrestle with feeling constrained, disoriented and suspended in air between what was and what will be. Yet, these thresholds, unsettling as they are, can be spaces of great creativity and transformation," writes ACC's Suzanne Winkel. MORE
NEW BOOK
Oh, Money! Money!
by Eleanor H. Porter
Kolaj Institute is pleased to announce the publication of Oh, Money! Money!by Eleanor H. Porter and illustrated by a collective of collage artists. In Porter’s 1918 novel, a Chicago multi-millionaire struggles to decide to whom he should leave his money. The book is a time capsule of early 20th century American life with a strong focus on the lives of women and observations about material culture and communities before the rampant consumerism of the 1920s and the Great Depression. To illustrate the book, Kolaj Institute organized a residency that brought together ten artists who worked collaboratively to make sixty-three collages that interpret Porter’s novel for a 21st century audience. 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
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. Artists collage dollar bills into flowers and mine material remnants to tell stories about home economics. MORE
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
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.
