What does the line between reality and fiction look like? Can an exhibition be a life-sized paper model of itself? Whose name didn’t make the press release? And if it sounds good on paper, where is the paper? These enigmatic questions locate Paper Exhibition at the periphery of the known—between paper architecture and new pages of old books. The exhibition renders the open space of the gallery as a labyrinth of folds, holes and gaps through which an exchange between the literal and the literary can happen.

Paper Exhibition began as a seminar conducted in San Francisco in 2008 entitled Kaleidoscope Room. Inspired by Jonah Freeman’s artwork, the series of class discussions drew on an open-ended inquiry: “Why are we so attracted by the missing, the lost, and the impossible to know?” Paper Exhibition, like Kaleidoscope Room, focuses on artworks that position themselves as fragments of larger, non-documented narratives of the lost or vanished. For example, trailers of non-existent films, an examination of the identities of disappeared artists, secret exhibitions and footnotes, and objects extracted from time capsules are included. In translating the seminar to an exhibition, aspects of the conceptual framework of the show have been lost as well. Some ideas and references have evaporated in this transition, while others are still disappearing.

The exhibition includes works and performances, in order of disappearance, by Julieta Aranda, Olivier Babin, Fia Backström, Judith Braun, Alex Cecchetti, Mariana Castillo Deball, Dexter Sinister, Gintaras Didziapetris, Jonah Freeman, Aurelien Froment, Dora Garcia, Mario Garcia Torres, Mark Geffriaud, Loris Gréaud, Morten Norbye Halvorsen, Will Holder, Pierre Leguillon, Gabriel Lester, Marcos Lutyens, Benoit Maire, Nicholas Matranga, John Menick, Melvin Moti, Trong Gia Nguyen, Job Piston, Prachaya Phinthong, Conny Purtill, Adam Putnam, Amy Robinson, Joe Scanlan, Gareth Spor, Donelle Woolford, and Joe Zane.

Curated by Raimundas Malasauskas