Jozef Bajus, "The Combing Wave"

The Collector's Gallery at the Albright-Knox is the museum's version of a small art dealership. All the works in the Collector's Gallery are for sale, and some are even able to rent (though aside from impressing future parents-in-law, I don't see a huge point in "renting" a work of art for a price that is anywhere from 5%-10% of the work's price anyway). The gallery usually shows artists who are currently popular in NYC, or in the local WNY area. This time around, they are hosting a small exhibition of some recent works of Jozef Bajus, who is a professor over at Buff State. Bajus' main medium is paper, which he cuts and manipulates to create extremely interesting and intriguing works of art. Some of the works almost seemed like deconstructed origami.

For many of his works, Bajus creates his intended effect by layering sheets of paper. These sheets can be different colors, textures, etc, and usually they all have different forms cut out from the paper. It seemed as if Bajus' preferred "cut out" style was an oblong shape with pointed ends, almost like a surfboard. This shape repeated itself it many of the works shown at the Collector's Gallery. Once all of the desired layers are in place, you get a real sense of the beauty of the work that has been created. Two of my favorite pieces from the show actually formed a diptych, and were called "The Big Dipper" 1 and 2. They consisted of white sheets splattered with black paint, with more seemingly random cut outs. The overall effect almost looks like a layered Jackson Pollock. For these types of works, Bajus requires the observer to get up close and personal with the art - looking at these from a distance will not do any of the pieces justice.

My other favorite pieces in the show were a numbered sequence called "Summer Reading." For these, Bajus took entire books, and painstakingly folded each of the pages, sometimes in the same way, a few times in different ways. Sometimes he cut the pages, sometimes he left them whole. In the end, the books appeared to be mini origami sculptures. The technique reminded me of the way students in middle and high schools would fold the outdated pages of their school planners in various ways, and by the end of the year they would have a lot of (pretty) folded, multicolored paper. Bajus has taken that idea one step further and turned his books into real art.

As for the space itself, the Collector's Gallery is fairly cramped, but for this exhibit it forced you to view all of Bajus' works up close. There were a few tables that needed to be maneuvered around, and took a little away from the space, but all in all it was a quiet and cozy place to view some art which is actually available for purchase.



This work, entitled "Summer," gives you an idea of the depth and layers located in Bajus' work.