| Project title: | A Walk with Paper |
| Location: | Daylight Studio and David Balfour Park Trail, Toronto, Canada |
| Date(s): | Part I – Exhibition: 24 June 2023 Part II – an artist-led walk: 2 July 2023 |
Artist Statement
Primarily a painter for many years, recently my practice focusses on multi-sensory, immersive experiences through the engagement with the materiality of slow surfaces and the materiality of stillness.
In addition to painting, I work with film, photography, textiles, and with the process of papermaking by hand. Working with paper as a primary medium encapsulates and engages my conceptual concerns which includes: the passage of time, of slowness, of our movement through urban and forested landscapes, of caring for our landscapes, of control vs. chance, of juxtapositions, and of regeneration. Through papermaking I have also developed my creative strategy which is one that involves academic research with hands on experimentation.
In a highly digital age where faster is often deemed better and where we spend hours in front of screens, paper’s materiality is perhaps an antidote. An ancient human invention, paper is today viewed as an ordinary ubiquitous material. We take its perceived simplicity for granted but as Yongwoo Lee, historian and curator, reasserted, paper “is a symbol of knowledge and information that gave birth to civilized society, and deep inside it contains poetry, aesthetics, and ecological justice.” For me, the time, knowledge, and physicality required for working with paper is a process that results in slowness and deep reflection. It resets and replenishes what the synthetic surface and speed of screen time has taken away. Yet, when working with film I explore the juxtaposition of technology, a fast medium versus paper, an aged old slow medium, searching for balance and stillness in between the two.
A Walk with Paper – About the project
This project consists of a new body of work based upon my practice-based methodology. It set out to answer how can a practice of experimental painting and immersive walks make connections between paper and walking, to counter the frenetic pace of the digitized age. The primary research combines experimentation in hand papermaking with walking as a form of contemplation. The secondary research explores the practices of contemporary artists who work with paper and/or walking as a medium. This methodology drives the exploration of slowness and caring for our landscapes, focusing on the sharing of time and space between human and nonhuman life forms. The explorations result in the creation of works that asks the audience to slow down, unplug from the digital world, and connect with their surroundings through all their senses.
To me, paper is the opposite of digitized screens that are fast and noisy; It is still and quiet until an artist gives it a voice, revealing its power. In an era filled with fleeting digital images, paper’s slowness and tactility brings reprieve and restoration.
Walking, like paper, is perceived as basic and unsophisticated at a time where we travel via fast-moving machines. As an art medium, walking has been deployed in European avant-garde contexts (Dada, Surrealism) as a dialectical counter to modernism. For my practice, it is a medium for reflection, a fundamental act that is vital to my existence.
The public facing outcomes for this project consists of two parts, an indoor exhibit, and an outdoor guided walk. They are conceptually intertwined and substantiate the connection between paper and walking; both parts ask the audience to slow down with the goal of attuning to their bodies and surroundings. The indoor event invites the audience to consider paper’s materiality as an antidote to the countless hours many of us spend with digital screens. The exhibit activates and gains the trust of the audience to participate in part II, the outdoor walk. The walk references and is informed by artists such as Hamish Fulton and Richard Long for whom solo walking serves as a fundamental part of their work. This project also draws upon socially engaged practices such as Clare Qualmann’s, as the walk is a shared collective experience.
A Walk with Paper, Part I at Daylight Studio, Toronto, 2023
Calming the Agitated, Film (8:46mins) Part of Indoor Exhibit
Outdoor Artist Guided Walk, Part II at David Balfour Park Trail, Toronto, 2023
For more information
www.cylstudios.ca / instagram@cylam_art / cylstudios@gmail.com