Cut, Paste & Beyond: Technique & Dreamscapes in Contemporary American Collage
Chapel Hill Public Library | October 13 – December 13, 2024
CURATOR: Courtney Thomas
Cut, Paste, and Beyond places the work of artists Justin Favela, Natasha Bowdoin, Danielle Hatch, Natalie Schorr, John Felix Arnold, Mila Tsvetanova, and Noah Scalin in conversation for the first time, and aims to identify connecting threads between these artists’ techniques and art. Attuned to identity, heritage, and sense of place, Justin Favela and Danielle Hatch assemble materials into collage art using craft practices. As concerns about waste, climate change, and the health of our planet grow, Mila Tsvetanova, Noah Scalin, and Natasha Bowdoin highlight the tension between the natural world and the artificial through contrasting organic forms and unnatural colors. Natalie Schorr and Hatch challenge cultural attempts to define the role of women, while John Felix Arnold, Bowdoin, Favela, and Hatch explore the sculptural, three-dimensional potential of wall-mounted collages.
This exhibition takes place 100 years after André Breton’s famous “Surrealist Manifesto” was published. It joins the exhibitions staged across the globe this year that aim to re-contextualize this movement in art history by documenting how today’s collage artists are continuing to explore what Breton called the “omnipotence of dreams.”
