Three Museum Exhibitions to Study and Savor

IN TOLEDO, WORKS ON OR ABOUT PAPER

WERNER PFEIFFER

Werner Pfeiffer has understood the power of books since he was a child in postwar Germany, where “there was no paper, there were no books. Censorship was everywhere.” In recognition of Pfeiffer’s sixty-plus years of commitment to paper, the Toledo Museum of Art has organized nearly two hundred of his one-of-a-kind and limited edition books, prints, collages, and experimental works on paper in the exhibition Drawn, Cut & Layered: The Art of Werner Pfeiffer through May 3.

Pfeiffer who is known worldwide as a creator of artist’s books and book-objects, uses paper as both a canvas and a structural material. His fascination with machines and machine-like construction coupled with his attraction to puzzles, metaphors, and word play has inspired works that are thought provoking in themselves. Among the works exhibited are Hocus Pocus, an homage to Dada; Zig Zag, a book created as a double accordion fold to show that “paper is not only a surface but has architectural structure”; The Banana Drawings, a series of drawings with seven basic images that reoccur in different configurations; and Liber Mobile, in which the alphabet becomes a visual element. In a touch of digital irony, the exhibition catalogue is a multimedia e-book. toledomuseum.org