Developed since 1980, the group of objects jointly referred to as Scrap Books evoke pages of a notebook where clippings of any kind are kept: newspaper or magazine articles, photographs, dried plants, ornaments, et cetera.

While the abstract configurations of monochromatic prints and drawings in greyscales make use of the qualities of translucent Japanese blotting paper, the physical manipulations—folding, overlapping, or masking—are analogous to those performed in such other series as Albums and Crumpled Screens.

Anchoring their narrative axes in the attributes of paper, Scrap Books represent what the artist termed Paper Art. Their materiality is marked with the specificity of substance and, in equal measure, with emphasised traces of procedures employed as part of the original ‘no print prints’ method. Physically, the works take the form of irregular spatial objects whose structures are based on geometrical grids.

Written by Krzysztof Siatka