ON PAPER

On Paper was originally presented by Stalke Galleri a decade earlier as a comprehensive examination of paper-based practices within contemporary art. With the present exhibition, the gallery returned to this format, expanding both its scope and ambition by inviting more than sixty artists to participate. The renewed project reflected Stalke Galleri’s long-standing engagement with paper not merely as a preparatory medium, but as an autonomous and conceptually charged field of artistic production.

The exhibition brought together artists working across generations and disciplines, demonstrating the remarkable breadth of approaches to paper—from drawing and collage to installation, photography, and process-based practices. Rather than proposing a unified aesthetic, On Paper emphasized heterogeneity, underscoring paper’s capacity to function simultaneously as surface, structure, archive, and action.

As articulated in the catalogue essay by Sebastian  Quedenbaum, paper occupies a paradoxical position in contemporary art: at once fragile and resilient, immediate and reflective, intimate and public. Her text framed the exhibition within a broader art-historical and material discourse, highlighting how paper-based works often reveal artistic thinking in its most direct and experimental form. In this sense, the exhibition foregrounded process, temporality, and material sensitivity as central concerns.

By revisiting On Paper, Stalke Galleri reaffirmed its curatorial commitment to sustained inquiry and historical continuity, while simultaneously opening the project toward new artistic positions and perspectives. The exhibition thus functioned both as a retrospective reflection and as a forward-looking platform, demonstrating the continued relevance of paper as a critical and dynamic medium in contemporary art.

The opening

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