David Umemoto

At the start of the crisis, having been deprived of access to his studio for several months like everyone else, he had to put my usual practice on hold and find alternatives to creation. The choice to work with paper came quite naturally as he was already doing all of his exploratory work of sculpture by hand on squared paper. The main challenge he set for himself in this series was to create three-dimensional objects using only a square sheet of paper, without loss, without additions and without glue, like the Japanese “kirigami”. This forces one to imagine the pieces in 3 dimensions in space and in 2 dimensions on paper at the same time, which is a very formative mental gymnastics.

“My concrete work is done in the mass. I usually start with a theoretical prism from which I remove matter.  The process with paper is totally different since it is surface work. I start with a generally square sheet that I cut and fold.  In this new “Folded Stones” series, I try to position myself halfway through this mass-surface duality. “