Louis Cameron selected by Mary Temple Sarah Crowner selected by Peter Simensky Bruce Dow selected by Allyson Strafella Marc Handelman selected by Vargas-Suarez Universal Karl Jensen selected by Brad Brown Joan Linder selected by Sonya Blesofsky Liza McConnell selected by Kirsten Hassenfeld Mike Quinn selected by Rachel Foullon Christopher Reiger selected by A.J. Bocchino

Opportunity as Community is an exhibition for which current and former residency artists were invited to recommend new artists to create work with Dieu Donné handmade paper. Based on a shared artistic experience, this exhibition empowers each artist through a performance that is as much about generosity as it is about work.

About the artists

Louis Cameron “I am interested in processes that remove my hand from direct engagement with a given work. In doing so I aim to neutralize the emotive potential of the mark. The result of such operations yield varying outcomes, from seductive physicality to deceptive illusionism.” More info: www.louiscameron.com

Sarah Crowner Sarah Crowner uses art history, specifically modernism, as an actual material in her collaborations with other artists and historical works to establish new situations and relationships. Working with “ghosts from the past” through the filter of craft and the handmade—notably ceramics, paper-maché and sewing—Crowner takes apart and reexamines modern art history, reassembling in a different, more abstract way. More info: www.nicellebeauchene.com

Bruce Dow “In recent years I have made sculptures and drawings that echo, adapt, and incorporate modernist industrial forms, from floor jacks, racetracks, and motorcycles, to display stands, Pantone colors, and Eames shell chairs. This drawing series using Dieu Donne paper is based on my longtime fascination with the Cyclone, Coney Island’s eighty-one-year-old wooden roller coaster, which comprises its own miraculous, barely contained universe. Possessing both elegant, bone-rattling curves, it first offers glimpses of sky and water, and then lets loose its weight and speed, emitting screams of pleasure and fear. Seen from a satellite, its form encapsulates all this, yet remains an enigma.”

Marc Handelman Marc Handelman’s paintings have examined the visual and rhetorical legacy of mid-19th century American Landscape painting, and how features such as the organization and conquest of space, the seduction of and identification with power, and the various naturalizations of ideology are marshaled and manifested in contemporary pathologies. In Handelman’s work, light often becomes a reoccurring feature addressing and connecting seemingly disparate subjects. Examining and employing visual strategies that seek to alter or question the agency of the viewer, Handelman’s paintings have also drawn from Op Art, fascist aesthetics, advertising, and modernist painting. More info: www.sikkemajenkinsco.com

Karl Jensen “I played a game to make this form. It has one very simple rule: use the entire rectangle of paper and keep all pieces connected. I like the game because it’s fun. I also like it because the shapes that result and the visual language it creates can be surprisingly beautiful. The piece is both geometric and organic and a little ominous, too. The title Blue Caveat is meant to reflect an uneasy feeling, as if the small blooms are the flower of a poisonous plant.”

Joan Linder “In culture hyper-saturated by electronic imagery I use the traditional materials of a quill pen and a bottle of ink to create large-scale images that persist in exploring and claiming the sub-technological process of observation and mark making. My subjects include the banality of mass produced domestic artifacts; the politics of war; sexual identity and power; and the beauty disclosed in the close scrutiny of natural and man made structures. This diversity of subject matter is a critical element in my attempt to express the complexity and variety of contemporary life. My goal as an artist is to be faithful to my deepest imaginative impulses and the observations interpretations and critiques of the world that these impulses generate.” More info: www.joanlinder.com

Liza McConnell “Personal economy of the artist is the most relevant factor in determining the form, content and duration of any artwork. It is a precarious, dynamic condition and, essentially, not an issue of money, but of imagination. While my art process has always been tethered to the above ideas, I’ve only just now presented my work in these terms. I connect this piece to my previous work by asking… What does a person do when invited to map their idiosyncratic particulars onto a more general, but also idiosyncratic, external situation? Exquisite handmade paper, the by-products of other peoples’ projects… and the miscellaneous materials in my studio, the by-products of my own… Every endeavor is a compromise between what I already have, and what I can imagine to be possible. When the endeavor is art, I try to make that exchange palpable in the resulting object.”

Mike Quinn More info: www.perryrubenstein.com

Christopher Reiger I am chiefly concerned with contemporary constructions of nature and am most interested in the relationship of modern man to his animal armature and brethren. My recent works also respond to the anxiety and uncertainty endemic to our time by returning to the traditional Sublime, picturing an ambivalent world that delights and inspires as surely as it destroys and awes. The animals and the hallucinatory landscapes depicted are specific – representations of a species and place – to be sure, but are also metaphors for the human condition. More info: www.christopherreiger.com

Text courtesy of the artists.