MAGAZINE | INSTITUTE | CURRENT ISSUE | ARTIST DIRECTORY | SHOP
CALLS TO ARTISTS
COLLAGE ON VIEW
Inner Flight
Keith Maddy at Howard Yezerski Gallery in Boston, Massachusetts, USA through 30 July 2022. For "Inner Flight", Keith Maddy has taken his labor-intensive practice to a larger scale by utilizing vintage materials such as folding screens and a six-foot scroll. Smaller, more intimate narratives can be found on vintage lithographs. This new body of work invites viewers to dip into their own imagination and see where the intricate imagery leads them. MORE
COLLAGE ON VIEW
Please Send to Real Life
Ray Johnson at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York, New York, USA through 2 October 2022. “Please Send to Real Life” explores the previously unknown camera work of the widely connected downtown New York figure, Pop art innovator, and pioneer of collage and mail art. After retracing the story of Johnson’s use of photography throughout his career, the exhibition offers an in-depth look at the late work the artist called “my career in photography.” MORE
FROM THE ARTIST DIRECTORY
Novel, Surreal Worlds
Antwerp, Belgium. Lebasille creates novel, surreal worlds. She plays around with proportions, combines elements from vastly different contexts, makes ages clash. This way, a dialectic transformation of the original images occurs, which allows the observer to reinterpret historic elements in refreshing ways, unveiling future possibilities. Hence, her work is characterized by both a quirky patina and a futuristic feel. MORE
FROM KOLAJ 35
Ellsworth Kelly: Postcards
Ellsworth Kelly (1923-2015) is celebrated for colorful hard-edge painting, minimalist public sculptures, and long history of lithography. Throughout his life, he was celebrated as the quintessential, 20th century American artist. A lesser known detail about Kelly was that he was a dedicated and prolific collage artist. This was less of a secret and more of an often neglected detail about his practice. In Kolaj 35, Ric Kasini Kadour interviewed Ian Berry, Dayton Director of the Tang Museum, about Kelly’s collages. MORE
See more from the printed magazine.
COLLAGE ON VIEW
Queer Perspectives
At The Loft in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, USA through 17 July 2022. The LOFT LGBTQ+ Community Center proudly partnered with Upstream Gallery for “Queer Perspectives”. Upstream Gallery invited all artists exploring LGBTQ+ themes to submit recent work for a national juried show. Seeking current, creative, personal explorations of LGBTQ+ life, issues, history and culture, the jurors’ aim was to draw attention to and celebrate the less often heard voices and thoughts of this important part of our artistic community. Written statements or quotes by many of the 32 artists are included, adding greater depth and richness to the exhibit. MORE
FROM KOLAJ 35
A Deep Sense of Self
The tidy beauty of Erin McGean’s collages betrays their sophistication. The series, “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers”, combines photographs of nude women with elegant floral displays in a manner that harkens to the minimalist collages of John Stezaker. These results are achieved by an artist with a developed practice and a deep sense of self. A portfolio of the Canadian artist's work appears in Kolaj 35. MORE
See more from the printed magazine.
Calls to Artists from Kolaj Institute
Deadline: July 17, 2022
LEARN MORE
Deadline: July 31, 2022
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New Publication
Current Issue
BOOK
Politics in Collage
In a time where the challenges facing us as individuals and communities have grown to seemingly insurmountable levels, further exacerbated by the increasing toxicity of the political climate, artists are using their work to confront these challenges by engaging their viewers in a higher level of discourse. Through a virtual residency, twenty-five artists created collage works examining complex socio-political issues that contemporary society is contending with, in order to spark meaningful dialogue and inspire deeper engagement. MORE
PRINT MAGAZINE
Kolaj 35
From the Scottish Highlands to the shores of Lake Ontario to Mombasa, Kenya, Kolaj 35 brings the wide-world of collage to your doorstep: Ellsworth Kelly‘s postcard collages, uncollage in action, collage en plein air, the practice of collecting fragments, Black collage in Baltimore, the wild artwork of a Montreal-based mushroom and pinball enthusiast, collage at New Orleans' city-wide art triennial, and more. On the cover is a collaborative collage in solidarity with the Ukrainian people, a small gesture of hope for a more peaceful world in the future. 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
Politics in Collage will be sent automatically to members of the Silver Scissors & Golden Glue Societies and to those who join before July 15th, 2022.
These special subscribers support the work of Kolaj Institute while receiving an item from Kolaj each month.
Recent Publications
SPECIAL EDITION
World Collage Day 2022
In honor of World Collage Day, 14 May 2022, 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.The printed magazine also includes an interview with 2022 World Collage Day Poster Artist Erin McCluskey Wheeler. 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
BOOK
Empty Columns Are a Place to Dream
A companion book to the project of the same name, Ric Kasini Kadour unpacks what monuments are and their role in our communities. The book shows what happens when collage artists reimagine monuments as sites of truth and reconciliation. The book features the collages of eighteen international artists made a series of collages that reimagined the empty column in the center of Birr, County Offaly, Ireland. MORE
ZINE
Identiblocks: Portrait #001
by Mark Vargo, 2022. Vargo's project pushes the boundaries of traditional paper collage into an interactive, dynamic and 3-dimensional space allowing individuals to both create and perform their own collage mask that represents their identity, vision and emotions. 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
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
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.
