paperwork gallery

Sunday, February 24, 2008

Have You Heard? Urbanite Magazine Feb '08

Modest Masterpiece

For some, the idea of owning original art is as abstract as a Jackson Pollock: Sure, it’s big and beautiful, but who can afford it? Paperwork Gallery, located in the Midtown Yoga building in Mount Vernon (107 E. Preston St.), aims to remedy that with its exhibits of high-quality, affordable works on paper. Opened in December by visual artists Cara Ober and Dana Reifler, Paperwork features art made by both emerging and established Baltimore artists. (Disclosure: Ober is an occasional Urbanite contributor; Reifler is a participant in the 2008 Urbanite Project.) Exhibit catalogs are available for all shows, and additional works from represented artists are available. Catalogs can be purchased at or at the gallery.

The opening for Paperwork’s new show featuring Elena Volkova’s photography is Feb. 8, 7 p.m.–9 p.m. Open Fri 4 p.m.–7 p.m. and by appointment. Go to paperworkgallery.blogspot.com.

—Marianne Amoss

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Paper Airplane: Call for Entries due April 1

Paperwork Gallery in Baltimore, MD presents a national juried show of works on paper, including drawings, paintings, prints, mixed media, and photography. Jurors: Amy Eva Raehse, Director of Goya Contemporary Gallery and Jaqueline Milad, Director of the Union Gallery at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Exhibition dates: June 15 - August 30. Applications must be postmarked by April 1. Applications should Include three jpegs, a title sheet, a one page resume, and a $15 application fee made out to Paperwork Gallery. Send applications to: Paperwork Gallery. 107 E. Preston Street. Baltimore, MD. 21202. Please email us at paperworkgallery@gmail.com for more questions.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Waterlines Essay by John Penny

Viewing the recent work of Elena Volkova immediately involves the viewer with questions about their awareness of boundaries and location. To paraphrase Edmund Jabes observation that “Light needs much dark in order to dazzle” , these works need much space in order to be situated.

By paying close attention to some of the images one can deduce that they are windows framing the sky, whilst other images may be of snow banks, or the sea, perhaps with mist, or the imprecision of a photographic time exposure. However, what they are – whether graphite drawings or photographs, or even what they are images of – is of secondary importance to how they are. They are tenuous.

As clouds, mist, snow, or blurred moving water the surfaces under consideration are barely ‘captured’, or at best, slight notated as fleeting states of affairs. They are citations of tenuity, lacking as they do, substance, or solidarity. Their thinness and scant perceptibility is most obvious in the relationship that is maintained with their boundaries. Edges are only established in order to bring themselves into question.

If the images are tenuous, then so is their form of presentation. Where the images are located on the paper is approximate. The photographs ‘anchor’ the centre of the page but are indeterminate in terms of where they stop or start vertically, and the drawings are anchored by an almost indiscernible grid to the paper that supports them and that either they fade into or emerge from. The work is suspended by clips from stretched wires, and is viewed against walls comprised of different surfaces. The paper curves slightly and casts shadows; it carries its images but is still allowed materiality in our space, even if it is a vulnerable materiality. The size of the sheet of paper, whether large or small, never lets the viewer forget that it is a material; a material bearing an image and suspended in front of a wall as an insubstantial intervention in our space. The openness of the material to the viewer, it’s vulnerability, has a direct bearing on one’s perception of the work and it’s meaning.

Temporality and contingency come together in the moment of the artwork, in one’s encounter with the artwork, to reinforce the tenuousness of that encounter. An encounter in which one is pointedly reminded of our own tentative presence and attempts at making sense of what is before us physically and by implication.

- John Penny

A few photos from Elena's Opening Reception...

There will be more pics soon! Elena has a fancy camera and we didn't realize it was set on manual focus. Oops.

Saturday, January 19, 2008

Waterlines: Photographs and Drawings by Elena Volkova - Opens February 8, 7-9 p.m.

from the Airscapes Installation

Waterlines Opening Reception: Friday, February 8, from 7-9 p.m.
Exhibition: February 8 - March 15, 2008
Paperwork Gallery is located at 107 E. Preston Street / Baltimore, MD

Artist Statement:
When you gaze into the sky, are you aware that you are gazing into emptiness? Do you see the sky as a barrier between you and infinity? If you perceive something as being empty, is it because you understand the concept of fullness, or is it because of fullness you perceive emptiness?

My artistic curiosity lie in the interchange between nothing and something, and its manifestation in everyday reality. While focused on natural elements, I am interested in the threshold between the two, their connotative values, and the ways in which they inform and question each other.

For the premise of my work, I focus on forms easily recognizable and universally understood: water, sky, land, forms that are part of our everyday poetry, sublime or mundane. Creating photographs of these subjects, my goal is to explore how much visual information is needed to perceive the essence of the subject against the background of nothing, a void. I am interested in the ways in which this essence serves as a framework for nothingness, as well as the ways it manifests itself against the canvas of nothing.

My exploration of nothingness is informed by Eastern philosophy, in which the notion of nothing is understood as the beginning and the potential. This I believe varies significantly from the Western existential notion of nothing as doom or death. According to the Taoist principles of Chinese painting, space is not a measurable quantity, but rather a means for suggesting the immeasurable vastness. Similarly, in most of my photographic work, the subject matter is gradually obliterated into large areas of a white void, suggesting unknown vastness and unrealized possibilities. Presenting the viewer with subtle indications of an image on a mostly white piece of photo paper, my goal is to bring forth the dialogue between the infinite qualities of the landscape and the limitations of the photographic process. In addition, I wish to question the viewer's perception of the boundaries - the edges of the piece of paper and the edges of the image - determined by camera framing.

Artist Bio:
Elena Volkova was born and raised in Kiev, Ukraine, and moved to the US in 1994. In 2007 she earned an MFA in Studio Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art where she studied under the mentorship of John E. Penny, PhD, and a BFA in Photography, minor in Art History from MICA. Elena has exhibited work in Baltimore, Washington DC, New York, Philadelphia, Illinois, and Virginia. She received several recognitions and awards, including the Janis Meyer Traveling Fellowship which allowed her to photograph the outskirts of Russia in 2003. Volkova resides in Baltimore, MD.