Periodically, we invite well-known artists and arts professionals to create a Short List of some of their favorite artists in the BRIC Contemporary Artist Registry. This Short List was curated by Melanie Kress.

Variously Formed Matters A book . . . is made of variously formed matters, and very different dates and speeds.... In a book, as in all things, there are lines of articulation or segmentarity, strata and territories; but also lines of flight, movement of deterritorialization and destratification. –Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus

This selection of artists looks toward a broad understanding of the medium of the book, and the great variety of forms in which it can be fabricated and experienced. Each artist in the selection works to varying degrees with collage tactics, the tactile and surface qualities of paper, and kinetic installations, which in turn explore the material, textual, and philosophical construction and reception of a book. On the other side of an intensely philosophical deconstruction of the elements of the book, we also see metaphors for the precariousness of being human, in delicate works on paper, puttering kinetic sculptures, and delightful collages of animals, all with an interest in the natural elements of wind, water, and light.

Louise Barry's book, Tailor, cobble, weld, embodies the sentiment of this collection, as it features found images of tools alongside two quotations regarding the process of writing, one from Swiss author Robert Walser and the other from famed folk musician Joni Mitchell. As Walser says in his Selected Stories, "If I am well-disposed, that's to say, feeling good, I tailor, cobble, weld, plane, knock, hammer, or nail together lines the content of which people understand at once. If you liked, you could call me a writer who goes to work with a lathe. My writing is wallpapering." This sense of the material and sculptural construction of text is at the heart of each of these artists' work, as they graze the edges between two and three dimensions, between the surface, sculptural, and kinetic qualities of paper. With a similar interest in tools,

Rachel Klinghoffer's most recent sculpture series is a set of used paint brushes encased in a seemingly frosting-like coating swathed with patches of pigment. Once rid of their use and smothered in epoxy, gems, and paint, the paintbrushes become cyphers of hand-held tools, reduced to a brief suggestion of the ergonomic utility enclosed beneath. Shifting the two- and three-dimensional from decoration to bodily construction, Klinghoffer also inverts surface and content in these sculptures, a move that could perhaps be described by Deleuze and Guattari's shift to the surface machinery of their body without organs, as activity is moved from the internal to the external.

Continuing the theme of the investigation of the superficial and sculptural qualities of paper, Joell Baxter weaves thin strips of screenprinted paper together into vibrant technicolor, subtle greyscale, or pleasantly pastel shapes that oscillate between two- and three-dimensional objects. Sometimes resembling folded carpets, his sculptures subvert the glossy, two-dimensional surface of the clean photographic print or the video screen, instead pointing to the importance of the physical quality of paper, and to how color fills our environment not only graphically but also spatially. His drawings highlight the importance he ascribes to weaving, a practice that, in its reference to fabric, suggests the importance of the lived pattern, as it appears in drapery and clothing. In these sculptures, the nineteenth-century European importation of the flat treatment of pattern in the Japanese ukiyo-e style – seen notably in the handling of fabric of Henri Matisse's paintings – becomes sculptural again, as the two-dimensional description of fabric becomes the three-dimensional materialization of the surface upon which pattern is usually printed.

Moving into the kinetic realm of these selections, while maintaining the graphic qualities introduced by Baxter, Juan Fontanive's sculptures, most often comprised of small, colorful, geometric elements, are playful constructions that feel like animations brought to life off of the video screen. In his own words, Fontanive "makes films without using light," a statement true of both his whirring, spinning mobile-like contraptions and his mechanical flip-book sculptures, constructed out of clock parts and featuring illustrations of flapping hummingbirds, clouds of bats, fish, and other animals. His earlier on-screen animations, including Yodelayee, 2004, point to the lively sense of humor which underlies all of his work.

Also creating filmic works without celluloid or projector, Lindsay Packer makes precarious, flickering, light-based kinetic sculptures and delightfully canny composite collages and drawings. Her works featuring animals and shadow play form whimsical tableaux placed among collections of reclaimed objects and images. Powered by light, water, and wind, Packer's work maintains a precarious sensibility suggesting the fickleness of nature and its forces.

Cyrilla Mozenter uses industrial wool felt, silk thread, industrial archival cardboard, and handmade mending paper to create poetic collages that sculpt flat surfaces into compositions ranging from bas-reliefs to fully-formed figures. Featuring animals, stand-alone letters, and schematic figures of boots and sleds, her sculptures slowly build woven narratives such as Arctic Spring, Warm Snow and other grayscale stories of seasons gone by. Also enclosing objects such as hazelnuts and cuttlebones inside her constructions, she preserves objects much in the way that literature preserves images, smells, and personalities.

Myra Brooklyn's bricolage sculptures are a combination of traditional sculptural materials such as clay, glass, wood, wax, and bronze with found objects such as hair, pencils, feathers, gum, magnets, and scraps of fabric. Her haunting sculptures often include a violent corporeality featuring model firearms and broken glass and eyes, eyelashes, and other body parts. Other works of melted material are "slumped," further emphasizing the visceral element she references in her sculpture.

Risha Gorig's flying sculptural installations, some propelled by balloons, water fountains, or even strung along power lines, float above Red Hook and other New York locations, evoking bizarre wonder and surprise in passersby. Her films, undulating between music videos and the lyrical, colorful films of Pipilotti Rist, dance around themes of rebirth, time, and the natural elements.  

ABOUT THE SHORT LIST CURATOR:

Melanie Kress is a curator and writer based in New York. She is one third of the writing collective The Rare Element and has recently joined High Line Art as a Curatorial Assistant. From 2010–2012, Kress was the Director and Chief Curator of New York-based project space Concrete Utopia, where she produced projects in collaboration with organizations adn events including the New Museum's Festival of Ideas for the New City, No Longer Empty, and Recession Art. In 2009 she was the recipient of a Curatorial Fellowship at the Slought Foundation, where she contributed to the projects John Cage | How to Get Started and Architecture on Display: On the History of the Venice Architecture Biennale. Her projects have been featured at institutions including The Invisible Dog, Brooklyn; Artists Space, New York; Art in General, New York; Bétonsalon, Paris; Schalter Projektraum, Berlin; and the Deptford Old Police Station, London. She holds a BA in Art History and Visual Arts from Barnard College, Columbia University and an MA in Contemporary Art Theory from Goldsmiths College, University of London.