Material and Immaterial
Last week I went to see the paper arts exhibit at the Eretz Israel Museum in Tel Aviv (“Material and Immaterial”—a nice title, will have to use it myself sometime) which was curated by Paul Jackson of the IOC. A solid, tasteful, well-arranged show of paper arts of various kinds, mostly by practitioners in Israel. Very little origami—three or four installations I think, depending how you count; but with one powerful installation of representational origami by French master Eric Joisel. Of his three faces I especially liked one that looked to be from leathery paper, presumably wet-folded. And the Joisel vases/bottles too were compelling, especially as another, permanent exhibit in the same Museum has historical glass bottles that form a nice counterpoint to his. (Glass has, over history, worked its way out of opacity and into translucency, as blowing techniques developed; and some of that same transition is kept in one of the Joisel bottles—with the layered paper at the narrow top being...