ON PAPER-CUTS AND ARTIST BOOKS         For more than ten years now, Max Marek has been concentrating in his work mainly on the technique of the paper-cut. Working with knife,cutter or scalpel Marek uses - amongst other materials - parchment, cardboard, copper foil or braille paper to create his paper-cuts and artist books.           The cutting out and eliminating, or "excavating", of different levels within a book are significant to his work. The result is often a transition or passage, enabling the viewer to see through the book from front to back. When leafing through the pages a microcosm becomes apparent, another world, where landscapes of the human body appear as cross-section views. This, for example, is the case in the book entitled > Schnittmuster <. In the book > Ohren <, cut from braille paper, a topography of one of the senses becomes visible. The contours of three ears are slightly altered from sheet to sheet. From the first to the last page one is drawn more and more into the motif depicted, which opens up to the viewer in terrace-like steps. The embossed dots in the braille paper create a relief which allows for more space and light to enter between the pages than would otherwise be possible in a book. Due to this effect, the emphasis is on the sculptural aspect, so that the image shown acquires a greater plasticity than would otherwise be the case. The basic impression of these works is related through the interaction of open and closed forms. This absence of material which has been cut out and removed is especially apparent in the technique of the paper-cut. The void, or negative space, is just as valid in the defining of the shape of the paper-cut as what is present in the area of positive space.           A further field of interest was only recently discovered by Marek, namely old lithographic proof sheets of animal anatomy charts found at flea markets. Here the deconstruction and the resulting metamorphosis of the illustration is what is interesting in these paper-cuts. The two levels of cut-out and picture, although united on one sheet of paper, remain strangely separated from one another. The body appears to hover over the image, often dominating tha anatomical details shown. Seldom do the organs of the animal seem to fit into the form of the human silhouette, so that each part seems imprisoned in a world of its own, only held together by sinews of paper which have not been cut away.           As in all of these here mentioned works Marek continues to dissect the body, presenting ever more aspects of his interpretation of the human condition - contemporary metaphors in our time.           © Max Marek 2012 | Imprint