Nino Mier Gallery is thrilled to announce Root Systems, an exhibition celebrating works on paper from over twenty artists in our program. The exhibition, which will be on view in Los Angeles from October 28 – November 25, 2023, features works that approach the paper medium with a range of captivating conceptual and formal methods.

Works on paper are the root of artistic expression. As children, we use paper to interpret the new world around us, doodling comics and learning the basics of language. As we grow older, paper is the ready-at-hand substance on which we sketch out impromptu scenes or write meaningful missives to loved ones. Paper is the most malleable material: it can be thrown out, framed, mailed, or stored in archives. For visual artists, works on paper play a crucial role in developing larger compositions, sculptures, and installations. But paper is not just a subsidiary medium that enables larger work: for some, these sketches comprise singular paintings and drawings in themselves, while for others, the works serve as a foundation for screen-prints and collages.

The dynamic works in Root Systems range from the figurative to the abstract, the minimal to the expressive—but each bear the mark of the artist’s hand. What results are compositions infused with a unique vitality, a life force matched by the organic materials—woodpulp, flax, hemp—that form the medium itself. In these paintings, drawings, and collages, the artists on view re-animate substances intimately connected to the natural world.

If drawing is the most fundamental form of materialized thought, as Joseph Beuys had it, then paper is the primary medium through which we transfigure thought into representation. Whether flipping the script on traditional narratives, containing domestic chaos within intimately scaled portraits, conjuring ineffable states like melancholy and longing, or exploring elements of visuality like color and form, the artists in Root Systems energize our engagements with the paper medium.