This exhibition highlighted the diverse and innovative ways that Lucas Artists Program (LAP) Fellows and Guest Artists have used paper as a vehicle for creative expression. Whether crafted from delicate, handmade Nepalese paper or inexpensive and readily available cardboard, works on view recalled the rich and varied histories of paper and its changing societal role and value. Some artists employed paper as a register for marks made by ink, paint, graphite, and more unusual media like coffee, and dyed twine; while others explored the possibilities of paper as a sculptural material, carving, cutting, folding, embossing, weaving and molding it into forms. Possibilities of Paper included highlights from the LAP’s extensive collection of works on paper by its fellows, as well as new commissions and works on loan. Over 30 works addressed a diverse array of themes, including hidden histories and social dynamics of the built environment; representations of gender; home, migration and displacement; the invisible labor and stories behind the objects we consume; blackness as a discursive field; and the kinship between humans and the animal kingdom.
Image Gallery
Meet the Artists
Partners and Sponsors
Possibilities of Paperwas made possible through the support of the following program partners, exhibition sponsors, and Friends of the LAP: Ann & Gordon Getty Foundation • William and Flora Hewlett Foundation • James Irvine Foundation • The McKnight Foundation • National Endowment for the Arts • The David and Lucile Packard Foundation • Myra Reinhard Family Foundation • University Art
In the News
- Possibilities of Paper: Select Works by Lucas Artists Fellows (2005-2015)
By Luhring Augustine