Papercraft Research

 The topic for this research is something called Papercraft! This term is extremely broad as it covers art works that are primarily focused on manipulating paper. For example, origami, card making, scrapbooking, quilling, paper making and etc.

Specifically for this post, we are focusing on the Papercraft artists Zim & Zou. These two talented individuals are French artists that specialize in paper layering. They have created many art pieces and installations, and have even collaborated with Microsoft, TIME, The Washington Post and many more very famously known groups and companies.

From my understanding, Zim & Zou create these magical pieces with mainly paper. They carefully measure out their pieces, draw shapes onto the paper and cut those shapes out using their utility knives. They layer paper on paper in order to create depth with the flat medium. Their color choices are quite calculated as well! Their piece Forest Folks just above is mostly based on complimentary colors! They wonderfully contrast each other, whilst staying harmonized as some of the colors are shifted and not extremely saturated in some ways.

This video shows a short 2 minute time-lapse of Zim & Zou creating a part of their personal project Back to Basics.

Ultimately, they only use paper and focus on their craftsmanship to create wonderful pieces of art!

Zim & Zou love to use paper as their artistic medium as they stated in their interview with Charles Purdy, "because it's a versatile material, easy to sculpt and very rich in terms of color and texture". In the interview, they also talked about how they have two usually separate fields in their work: "One that focuses on industrial objects, with very straight and geometric shapes, and another that is about animal and organic shapes".

I chose this two person artist team as my main research point as their art stood out to me right away. As I am currently in my second semester of University, I am studying color theory and due to that color combinations and interactions are one of the things I think about on a 24 hours basis. When I saw the bold choice of colors used by Zim & Zou in their Back to Basics article I was immediately hooked. The colors made the project itself seem busy, but not too busy. It was just right!

When I saw the piece above, I quickly thought, "They're using tetradic colors!" Since I somewhat understood their color concept I instantly became interested in learning more about what colors they would choose for their other projects. At the same time, their hand-cut details really add a humanistic feel to the artwork. It's like in painting and how the painter's paint strokes are essentially a signature. All in all, I really love their color choices and concepts! They're super interesting and I'd love to see an installation by them someday!