Opening Saturday, the Currier Museum will display two new contemporary exhibits inspired by paper.
“This spring, the Currier Museum will focus on contemporary art,” said Alan Chong, director of the museum. “Both exhibitions feature objects which have been pierced, cut, abraded, and manipulated in some way.”
New Hampshire artist and Dartmouth college professor Soo Sunny Park has created an art installation using light called BioLath. Visitors are immersed in a spaced filled with natural and artificial lights that have been filtered and refracted.
Organic in form but industrial in material, her sculptural installation explores the relationship between nature and artifice, and between the natural and the built environment.
The exhibit will run until Aug. 6.
Deep Cuts: Contemporary Paper Cutting explores an art form dating back to ancient China. Objects great and small are made from manipulated paper.
“The endlessly inventive artists featured in Deep Cuts create work that is as visually arresting as it is conceptually rich,” said Samantha Cataldo, exhibition curator. “In the dawn of a so-called paperless society, their work stands in striking opposition to our digitized world.”
A 40-page color book of the exhibit pieces is for sale at the museum and online for $10.
Featured artist Elizabeth Alexander will also lead a community art project “Deep Cuts in the American Dream.” Visitors, using junk mail, will be asked to create shapes, based on a template to add to the installation in the lobby. The project will run throughout the exhibit, until May 21.
A reception on the exhibits will be Friday at 7 p.m. Tickets are $20 in advance or $25 at the door.
Other events connected to the exhibits are storytime reading of Henri’s Scissors by Jeanette Winter on Monday at 11:30 a.m.; a creative studio paper project on Wednesday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.; and docent tours at 11:30 a.m. on March 2 and 18 and April 9.
For more information, visit currier.org.