Paper Weight

I appear to be going through a bit of a phase with the sculpture that I am indulging in at the moment. The aesthetic that is capturing my imagination at the moment are those works which seem ephemeral, not solid, neutral, not garish and provoke the onlooker into believing that they have involuntarily formed themselves.  In the same vein of  Sema Bekirovic’s dice sculpture which I previously wrote about, the sculptural works of New York born artist Mia Pearlman are as delicate as they are overpowering. Like the swirling weather systems that they invoke, these structures, when installed within the gallery space last only the duration of the exhibition. This is partly due to the materials comprising of paper but it is also an informed decision on the part of the artist. Here is what the artist says about the work,

‘I make site-specific cut paper installations, ephemeral drawings in both two and three dimensions that blur the line between actual, illusionistic and imagined space. Sculptural and often glowing with natural or artificial light, these imaginary weather systems appear frozen in an ambiguous moment, bursting through walls and windows, or hovering within a room.

My process is very intuitive, based on spontaneous decisions in the moment. I begin by making loose line drawings in India ink on large rolls of paper. Then I cut out selected areas between the lines to make a new drawing in positive and negative space on the reverse. 30-80 of these cut paper pieces form the final installation, which I create on site by trial and error, a 2-3 day dance with chance and control. Existing only for the length of an exhibition, this weightless world totters on the brink of being and not being, continually in flux. It is my mediation on creation, destruction, and the transient nature of reality’