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Ausstellungen >> Paperroads >> Foreword PaperRoads - Ein Kunstprojekt von Wolfgang Tiemann zu 1250 Jahren Papiergeschichte
Prof. Rolf Wernstedt, President of the State Assembly of Lower SaxonyForeword to the PaperRoad Project by Wolfgang Tiemann (Text in deutscher Sprache: Das Projekt "PaperRoads" von Wolfgang Tiemann)
The "PaperRoad" project by Wolfgang Tiemann, an artist based in Lower Saxony, recalls the now largely forgotten story of how paper made its way from China to the West. Tiemann's work combines cultural history with artistic expression. The webs he uses provide a surface for the presentation of symbolic and ideographic allusions to the way in which paper influenced each new cultural sphere it invaded. Both the material and the message are thus united by a single theme. The monumental size of the etchings not only underscores the importance of paper as a medium, but also symbolizes the extraordinary degree of artistic sensitivity the highly complex printing process demands. The project's venues provide yet another link to the subject matter. Samarkand, where the exhibition is due to open in March 2002, was home to the first paper mills in the Islamic world. After Samarkand, the exhibition will travel on to other cities connected with paper production, including Hildesheim (June-August 2002), Cordoba/Seville (October/November 2002) and probably to Nuremberg and Shanghai too. Ausstellungen >> Paperroads >> Foreword |
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When the art of papermaking first spread from China to the Islamic world and from there to Europe some 1,250 years ago, doubtless no one could imagine just how important to humanity's cultural development this material would one day be. The spread of the written word, of book-printing, scholarship and education propagated first in the Islamic world and later in Europe rested to a large extent on the art of papermaking itself and on the countless new techniques and innovations with which it was sophisticated over the centuries. Today, what the Far East for a long time viewed as a "holy material" has long since become a product of everyday use. Some might even postulate that paper's dominance is at last coming to an end, now that the advent of electronic media has brought us to the threshold of the next phase of our cultural evolution.