Paper is a material with which we each begin a relationship very early in our lives. In fact, it is such a constant and close companion throughout our lives that it is very difficult to imagine life, nearly 1000 years ago, without it. At first, it is the colors and noises of paper that fascinate us, then it is the marks we can make on paper that feed a growing sense of self awareness and importance. Eventually we see that we can cut and fold and make something satisfying out of paper and this feels like a worthwhile goal in our first few years. For some of us, this simple series of accomplishments never loses its wonder or mystery.

In my university years I became aware of Louise Nevelson's elegantly simple flat paper constructions derived from her more dramatic and large scale wooden assemblage sculptures. While I certainly loved the large and grand, the small and simple had their own gentle beauty. A number of years later, I visited Tyler Graphics in New York when Sir Anthony Caro was at work with Kenneth Tyler and his studio crew on his dramatic editions of paper wall sculptures. A decade later, Caro returned to Tyler and took the next step into three-dimensional free standing sculptures in paper. To see these delicate and graceful works, with his massive and powerful steel works in the back of one's mind, is to begin to see the whole of the man and intellectual and artistic complexities of his life of statements and commentary. I think an artist experimenting with mediums foreign to him is even more revealing than studies and sketches, which I always prize.

Around the same time, I had the great opportunity to spend an afternoon with Isamu Noguchi at his Long Island City studio where bamboo, paper, stone, steel, string, an eagle's feather and a small steel bolt all came together with the same elegance and grace one sees in Noguchi's face and hands. Each carried equal importance and significance in what ever arrangement they were assigned – a lamp, a table, a small construction or a massive public space. His thinking was on display and his respect for all of his materials was clear. That day impacted my view of and approach to materials. In so doing, it elevated paper to the status of a fundamental element – it was, in fact, a staple and an integral part of our lives and our society; it was both man-made and inseparable from man. Arguably, man's most significant invention and one unique in its magnitude, paper is also man's favorite waste product and most abused resource.
This exhibition begins what I hope will be a long exploration, spread over many years and continents, of paper when it is in the hands of artists, of people with an enhanced sensitivity and vision as well as a broad spectrum of technical skills.

Richard Bullock