Collection Is Cohesion

FROM KOLAJ 28

Uncollage, a New Word for a Particular Set of Collage-Based Operations by Todd Bartel

In the spring of 1999, I visited Bo Joseph’s Brooklyn studio for the first time. Before that visit, I believed the overlapping and tangential silhouettes within his work were created by free-hand drawing. While they are occasionally drawn freehand, I learned that he generally produces his paintings by placing and layering stencils to form his composite imagery, and that he has been using many of the same stencils since the early 1990s. It was during this visit that I uttered the word “uncollage” for the first time. This fourth article in the series on uncollage takes a look at Joseph’s work and why it inspired the coining of this new collage term.

This article appears in Kolaj 28. To see the complete article, SUBSCRIBE to Kolaj Magazine or Get a Copy of the Issue.

All uncollages are collages, but not all collages are uncollages. It seems simple enough to say, and a bit obvious, but such acknowledgments help to establish paintings as uncollages. More to the point, under the right circumstances, uncollage paintings can synonymously be called collages.

To see the complete article, SUBSCRIBE to Kolaj Magazine or Get a Copy of the Issue.

Todd Bartel is a collage-based artist. His work assumes assembled forms of painting, drawing and sculpture that examine the roles of landscape and nature in contemporary culture. Since 2002, Bartel has taught drawing, painting, sculpture, installation art and conceptual art at the Cambridge School of Weston, Weston, Massachusetts. He is the founder and the Director of the Cambridge School’s Thompson Gallery, a teaching gallery dedicated thematic inquiry, and “IS” (Installation Space), a proposal-based installation gallery. Bartel holds a BFA in painting from Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA in painting from Carnegie Mellon University. The Kolaj Magazine Artist Directory page has more information, as well as www.toddbartel.com.