Ethereal Paper Sculptures Float Inside a Church
Peter Gentenaar isn’t any ordinary paper artist. He creates extraordinarily beautiful paper sculptures that have an ethereal quality to them. His exhibition at the abbey church of Saint-Riquier church in northern France proves this point. It’s where he hung more than a 100 paper sculptures in the church’s grand halls. (What a perfect backdrop.)
On his website he describes his process. “Because I started out as a printmaker and sculptor, it took time to lose the idea that paper was a helpful carrier for prints or a filler for molds. Gradually I found that the single sheet of paper, which had not dried yet, had all the possibilities I needed. A paper sheet is thin and strong and can be compared to the leaf on a tree or plant. Reinforced with very thin ribs of bamboo that look like the ribs of a leaf, the analogy between the sheet of paper and the plant form is emphasized even more. By beating my pulp very long, an extraordinary play of forces occurs during the drying processes of my paper sculpture.”
