Fiene Scharp

Cutting, taking apart, revealing, opening up, undoing—segmenting, reassembling, overlaying, layering.

For her third solo exhibition at Kuckei + Kuckei, Fiene Scharp presents new paper cuts, drawings, and objects that operate between the poles of construction and deconstruction. Her materials are antiquarian graph paper, millimeter and logarithmic paper, or dressmaking patterns.

By taking the paper apart and then combining and bundling it in new ways, she creates three-dimensional structures, linear drawings, and organic networks. The resulting works show traces of both the destructive process of creation as well as constructive aspects and reveal new, complex compositions.

One of the exhibited groups of works is created out of compact Plexiglas boxes in classic A4 and A3 formats. These objects feature multiple paper cuts, staggered one behind the other and separated by panes of glass. Variously colored graph paper, accounting pages, or grid forms provide the underlying template for the papercuts. Using a scalpel, the artist removes the area in between the lines, creating delicate grids that are repeatedly marred by the process of cutting and interspersed with barely visible “flaws.” Multiple paper cuts layered on top of one another create spatial structures of open gaps that allow you to see the layers underneath. The rhythm of the grids and their disrupted regularity bring to mind tightly woven fabrics, architectural facades, or conjure associations with systems and cells.

Another group of works combines various antiquarian graph papers, which Fiene Scharp joins together to form paper sheets she then reworks using a scalpel. The grouping and combination create a kind of cluster, a composite of various ordering and structuring systems that floats like a linear drawing before the background of the work.

In a series of four black paper cuts, the artist first created a grid drawing on paper using a stamp and India ink. The irregularity of the printed image creates imperfect, organic networks. The white areas of the paper were then cut out so that only the black grid drawings remain.