Peter Callesen’s Art
These paper sculptures have much to recommend them: they are visually appealing,1 thoughtful, and, considering the minimalist materials, amazing.
I am, however, most taken by the artist’s manipulation of dimensions.
I have a specific and clear memory of being delightfully puzzled and enticed when I read, at age nine, an article in the World Book Encyclopedia2 explaining that a Mobius Strip has only one side or, to use the more mathematically precise term, only one boundary.
Since that serendipitous introduction to the concept of dimensions, I’ve been fascinated with geometry (Euclidian and Non-Euclidian), topology, hypersurfaces, manifolds, vector fields, and the like.
Callesen’s ability to effect the metamorphosis of a flat surface into a two dimensional (e.g., a flat ballarina standing upright on a flat platform) or three dimensional (e.g., a fully realized bird hovering above the flat sheet from which it was formed) scene is simple to intuitively grasp but nonetheless almost mystic in its execution.
While the most sophisticated models I managed to construct were on the lines of transforming a plane (AKA a sheet of paper) into a cylinder by the intricate process I liked to call “rolling it up,” Mr. Callesen, on the other hand, creates these exquisite figures and witty scenes. His own description of his work is also more elegant:
I find the A4 sheet of paper interesting to work with, because it probably still is the most common and consumed media and format for carrying information today, and in that sense it is something very loaded. This means that we rarely notice the actual materiality of the A4 paper. By removing all the information and starting from scratch using the blank white 80gms A4 paper as basic for my creations, I feel that I have found a material which, on one hand, we all are able to relate to, and which on the other hand is non-loaded and neutral and therefore easier to fill with different meanings. The thin white paper gives at the same time the paper sculptures a fragility which underlines the tragic and romantic theme of the works.
This site strikes me as clean, fresh, and wonderfully contemplative and, consequently, an especially apt offering for a Saturday that, at least in these parts, features cold temperatures, gusty winds, and rain mixed with sleet.
Web Sites
Entry Page To Callesen’s Site:
Peter Callesen Home Page
My favorite page of Callesen’ work, featuring the one page sculptures:
A4 Papercut
A Korean site with more pictures (text is Korean):
Korean Site: Callesen
The two sculptures below are from the Korean site. The preceding sculptures can be found at A4 Papercut
Credit Due Department
Peter Callesen’s site was once on my Heck Of A Guy To-Publish list but mysteriously disappeared, to be re-listed only when Mr. Science independently recommended it to me.
Footnotes
- I realize that “visually appealing,” along with “attractive” and “pleasant” come off as damning with faint praise, but “beautiful” and its congeners applied here would seem meaningless clichés at best and perhaps even ridiculous. If I think of a more appropriate term I’ll let you know.↩
- In the literary desert of my home town during summer vacation (when the school libraries were unavailable) and between monthly bookmobile visits, my reading choices were my comic books (read and re-read many times), my mother’s collection of Reader’s Digest condensed books, and the World Book Encyclopedia, which some fast-talking door-to-door salesman had, thank goodness, convinced my parents was the key to their children’s intellectual growth. I read my way through the World Book volumes a couple of times.↩
