Cutting Edge: Untraditional Papercuts by Three Contemporary Artists
December 19th 2009 – April 25th 2010
From Saturday 19th December 2009, the Museum of East Asian Art will be hosting a breathtaking exhibition of contemporary papercuts by three artists of Chinese descent, Lo Jhy Yen, Nie Chun-Mei, and Zhang Wenqing. “Cutting Edge: Untraditional Papercuts by Three Contemporary Chinese Artists”, will display an array of colourful and unusual works until 25th April 2010. The exhibition will run concurrently with the Museum’s Lunar New Year celebrations in February 2010.
The development of paper has been entwined with the history of China for thousands of years so it is not surprising that it has just as long a tradition of being used in ornamentation. Ornamental papercuts are especially important around the time of the Lunar New Year, when old ones would be taken down to be replaced by new papercuts for the coming year. Now practiced in many countries throughout the world with varying techniques and subject matters, the papercutting of China is often seen as traditional and rustic. This is however not the case – with recent exhibitions in China featuring papercuts of athletes in honour of the 1st anniversary of the Beijing Olympic Games and the 60th Anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
Cutting Edge moves a step further on from these contemporary themes into new and untraditional forms of papercutting. One of the artists exhibiting at the Museum, Lo Jhy Yen, describes his work as “concentrating upon the strength of colours and characteristics of different materials”. This focus on colours, and especially the layering of multiple colours within a piece, is a prominent theme throughout this exhibition. In the past, traditional papercuts have been two-dimensional, either monochrome or with colours applied to the design. Lo Jhy Yen’s innovation comes from the layering of a series of painted papercuts, one on top of another, to create a sense of depth. In this way the artists hope to contribute to the development of papercuts as a modern art form.
Michel Lee, Curator of the Museum of East Asian Art enthused “It’s great to be able to have such an appropriate exhibition during the Lunar New Year. Not only does it draw from Chinese tradition, but the techniques these papercut artists use are groundbreaking. They really illustrate how artists are bringing a craft tradition to the present-day in the form of modern art.”
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