Amanda Betz
Formation Gallery
11 Aug 2023 – 23 Sep 2023
Opening Friday 11 August at 4-8 pm
4 pm: Performance: Celluloid Exposure by Amanda Betz and Nana Francisca Schottländer
Formation Gallery is pleased to present Amanda Betz's solo exhibition "We are Cellulose", which revolves around the paper as a material that breathes and lives just like a human body and which stands as a membrane between us humans and nature, from which paper in its basic substance - the cellulose - derives from.
In the exhibition "We are Cellulose", Amanda Betz digs into the substance of the paper and unfolds our connection to the material. Quite literally, she dives into the natural binder – cellulose- the primal building block of all trees and forms the basic component of paper.
By creating an analogy between the tree and humankind, our body/tree, bark/skin, the tree's roots/our nervous system, Betz poetically points to the tree and humankind's potential, strength, and fragility. Our connection to the paper – the trees – also becomes a symbol of our connection to nature and ourselves, our emotional life, and sensory layers. Like paper that is mass-produced and alienated from its nature and original form, we as humans can likewise become alienated, numb, and single-minded.
With this exhibition, Betz reminds us of the importance of taking a step back from our hectic everyday life and instead taking a step towards nature. To allow ourselves to pause our rational thinking and being in the world and dare to sense and feel, pay attention, hear the wind rustling in the trees, and feel the blood streams rushing through our bodies.
Betz has collaborated with performance artist Nana Francisca Schottländer in connection with the exhibition. Before the opening reception, the artists will connect performance and visual art, movement, and sculpture, and let paper and body merge as the paper changes form from liquid to solid. From mass to body.
Under the title "Celluloid Exposure", the two artists will perform a live molding process in paper, where the body and the paper sheet mutually evoke each other. The paper is painted with pure cellulose, dissolves, dries, gathers around the body, and forms an imprint, which becomes a work. Together they transform the paper into skin, a shield, a memory of the tree and let the nature of the paper speak for itself by setting it free through physical stages in the encounter with the body.
To Amanda Betz, the paper is her key material, and with this exhibition, she shows with both seriousness and humor what the material is capable of. She creates a connection between the inside and the outside with paper spines and nerve pathways, fishnet undershirts, and lingerie. The paper is so simple and yet so complex, thin and fragile, but with countless possibilities - like a human body, if you will...
Amanda Betz (b. 1978) graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, the School of Architecture in 2005, as well as The Bartlett School of Architecture, London (2003-2004) and École des Beaux-Arts, Paris (1998-1999). The paper has always been Betz's primary medium, with a particular focus on experiments in the span between the two- and three-dimensional, where the possibilities of pressing, reshaping, and stretching paper are explored. Betz uses her background as an architect to construct the paper – she draws on and transforms the paper with the computer and the laser cutter as her closest tools, after which she shapes and processes the paper into three-dimensional objects. Her works are most often on a 1:1 scale, creating a relation to the work that is both intuitive and physical.
Amanda Betz has achieved both national and international recognition for her ability to capture great complexity in a single object, and she has been awarded several times for her work. She has previously exhibited at, among others, Charlottenborg Kunsthal, Den Frie Udstillingsbygning, Danish Architecture Center, Rundetårn, Museum for Papirkunst, Bakkehuset and Officinet. And later this year will be part of a group exhibition at the Kastrupgaard collection, which has a particular focus on paper cutouts.
The performance is kindly supported by the Danish Arts Foundation.
