The Ends of Collage unfolds across three platforms, each offering a different perspective from which to review the medium of collage and its legacies. In New York, the exhibition is dedicated to some of the technical preconditions of collage – a variety of cuts, masks and windows, image manipulations and the notion of ‘edge’. In London, the presentation shifts the focus towards some of the major themes that characterise the medium, looking towards fantasy, the domestic sphere, dismemberment of the social or private body, and the mobility of images.
The third platform, which takes place on the pages of a printed publication, brings together various theoretical motivations that precipitated the emergence of collage at the beginning of the 20th century along with those that expanded the medium beyond its traditional limits with the emergence of digital cultures in the late 1970s. The book includes writings by Elza Adamowicz, Louis Aragon, Jean (Hans) Arp, Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Douglas Crimp, Max Ernst, Yuval Etgar, Clement Greenberg, Hannah Höch, Sherrie Levine, Groupe Mu, Craig Owens, Christine Poggi, Richard Prince, Martha Rosler, Ali Smith, John Stezaker, Brandon Taylor and Herta Wescher.
The curator of the project and editor of the publication, Yuval Etgar, is a doctoral candidate in Contemporary Art History and Theory at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford. Etgar states: “In a time where the term ‘cut and paste’ refers more often to allegorical and digital operations than to the use of scissors and glue, it seems imperative to go back and examine the technical invention that lies on the historical seam between pictures and images, between manual craft and the mediated reality of our time.”
The title chosen for the exhibition refers literally and metaphorically to the place where collage fulfils its calling – at the ends or edges of pictures and fragments, where separate worlds come together or break apart from one another. Exhibited artists include Jean Arp, Giacomo Balla, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Mark Flood, Jack Goldstein, Ellsworth Kelly, Lee Krasner, Louise Lawler, Sherrie Levine, Linder, Rene Magritte, Pablo Picasso, Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman, and John Stezaker.
Luxembourg & Dayan will be hosting a symposium on the legacies of collage in the digital age. Speakers include David Campany, Linder, and John Stezaker.
The Ends of Collage, until 15 April, Luxembourg & Dayan, New York and London.
For more, visit www.luxembourgdayan.com.
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Credits
1. Linder (b. 1954), Superautumatisme, Grande Jeté XV, 2015. Enamel on magazine page, 101/8 x 81/8 in. (25.7 x 20.6 cm.)© The artist, 2017.
