As promised, I went to see the Peter Callesen exhibit, "Folded Thoughts," in Chelsea before it closed (January 17th). It was surprisingly small, but not disappointing, even though there were only five pieces on view—two large freestanding and three small shadowboxed. I took pictures.too. (Please don't reproduce them.) This beauty was hanging in the gallery window:
It's much cooler looking from the inside, as you get the background of the street showing through the negative space, instead of stark white the gallery walls. What surprised me about all the pieces was how many loose components of it there are. The skeleton is attached at the feet to the sheet of paper it's been cut out of, but if you look closely, you'll see a lot of scattered bits on the floor around it as well. Those are "leaves" and bits of "twigs" from the "tree." It's autumn and this tree is shedding its leaves, or its just plain dying, and cut from its trunk is our own mortality in the shape of a skeleton. The metaphors are pretty obvious, but still cleverly done and with great detail.
The other large piece of view was laid flat on a platform. The silhouette cut out was the shape of a standing (or prone) human body and the 3D portion was set of Gothic ruins at the perimeter. With this, there were loose "bricks" tumbled from the walls as though it were a real decaying ruin.What you don't see in this or other photos, and don't unless you're
right in front of the works themselves, is how much texture the 3D
portions of them have. The photo below is from a smaller piece that was mounted in a shadowbox. The silhouette in this case is a classical building, including the angelic figure. For scale, the fallen "columns" are about the size of a bite-size Tootsie Roll. The ends of the columns look like they've really been broken off from a larger piece, and look so much more substantial than they are.
One of the things I love about Callesen's paper cuts is that they're about what's inside: time, mortality, fears, hopes, dreams. Hard to believe you can squeeze so much meaning out of a flat sheet of paper just by cutting and folding.
Those pieces are lovely. Lots of talent and patience.
Posted by: Roger | January 11, 2009 at 09:09 PM