There’s a strong trend lately in visual arts of trying to create works which cannot be properly reproduced in means other than those in which they we’re made. The reason is simple: to make it worth going to an art exhibit instead of just seeing pictures of it, to make it worth buying an artwork instead of printing a digital version and stick it to the wall.

So, many artists are leaving behind conventional drawings and paintings, and are trying to use other visual expression techiniques, involving installations and performances, and other different formats. But some of them have noticed that they don’t need to reinvent the wheel… Milennia ago the sollution was ready: sculpture.

Seeing the picture of a sculpture is not the same thing as seeing it personally, you can’t feel the object’s tridimensionality. Even if you see pictures of the object in every angle possible, still it’s not the same thing. And, of course, gluing a picture of the sculpture on a wall definitively is not the same as having the sculputure.

A kind of sculpture which is very common these days is paper sculpture. There are artists doing unbelieveable things with that. One of them is danish Peter Callesen.

It’s kind of offensive to say that Peter is “one of them”. After all, he doesn’t just make cute, delicate and empty things, like most of other “paper artists”. His works have messages… Sometimes tragic messages, sometimes comic messages, almost always tragicomic messages.

But, of course, he doesn’t put beauty and suavity aside. Peter’s paper manipulation skills are unquestionable.

More of his works with A4 paper can be seen here. But he does even more fantastic things with larger papers, like in the sculpture below:

Bu there’s much more, more than it would fit in this post. See the several galleries of his website and understand what I mean.

Callesen also works with other expression mediums. Apparently he is one of the artists I’ve mentioned in the begining of this post, which try to reinvent the wheel and expand the limits of visual arts.  It’s a dangerous path, and full of failures. But, fortunately, his attempt made him get to the paper sculptures, which, although just a part of his vast artistic production – which involves unusual performances and installations -, are the great responsibles for his success.