June 23 – July 4, 2010
Shapes of objects, words, and phrases are cut from magazine pages and arranged, specimen-like, between panes of glass. The work exposes the beauty on the boundaries between sculpture and collage, word and picture, dream and document and how content bleeds over the edges.
Why my Cut-outs are not Collage
Collage is a form that was invented to mirror a fragmented world. Dada collagists looked around at a world shattered by senseless war and began using techniques they borrowed from Cubist paintings as a way to stitch it back together again. Occasionally the result was beautiful and even inspiring (Schwitters comes to mind, and Jess Collins) more often, it became a weapon of critique for a society that had gone wrong.
My cut-out work is about Limitations. Each of the shape that you see was cut from a single page of a magazine. Cutting out reveals the truth of the page as object (now turned into a very thin, flat sculpture) and the truth of the image as the surface of this sculpture. I’m aware of the “content” in the imagery but I think of it like the texture in a block of stone that will have a “say” in the final sculpture but will not be its form. After this paper sculpture is made, it either stands on its own, or is assembled with other sculpted shapes in groupings. Either way, they cast their own shadows.
The limits of the work are the single page / single cut but that’s not a restriction. This is a playful practice, sometimes a page is cut up into shapes and then re-assembled into a new form (the flowers and the DaO bust) and often the groupings have a second meaning in the collision of imagery on their surfaces.
So the cut-outs are neither here (the image that we make real) or there ( the object that we see as other) , but are in between and both.
About the Artist
Owner emeritus of the legendary bookstore This Ain’t the Rosedale Library (“Charles Huisken and Dan Bazuin have been the kings of Toronto’s counter-culture literary underworld since the 1986.”-Martini-boys), Dan has won awards for his films and art work, is founding member of the Peregrine Co-op and has written for magazines and newspapers. Dan is now a contributing editor and advisor for One Hour Empire magazine
