British artist Abigail Reynolds does not take images at face value. Using the art of collage, she enhances the original picture by creating intricate assemblages out of repurposed vintage photographs, magazines, encyclopedias, atlases, and other materials she finds. “The act of folding one image into the other pushes them out into three dimensions in a bulging time ruffle,” she says. Often, these feature rural England, architectural landmarks, and obscure landscapes, cut and folded into three-dimensional geometric patterns.
Reynold’s process is closely linked to books and libraries, where she draws much of her inspiration. For her upcoming project titled “The Ruins of Time: Lost Libraries of the Silk Road”, she will visit 16 libraries lost to political conflicts, looters, natural catastrophes and war. She intends to create a cluster of book forms, prints, collages and her first moving-image works, all of which will be included in a book, thus completing a journey that starts and ends with the library.
She shares, “Making work is a strange and erratic dance of intuition, graft, brute materiality and opportunism. I allow myself to be attracted to certain images, forms and places which then become points to work away from. For me, making work is partly aversion and partly attraction. I enjoy to play with my sense of surroundings and also materiality. I also enjoy the difficulty of sculpture and the challenge of problem solving, which is always present when making anything three dimensional.”
Armed with a pair of scissors, Huntz Liu's multilayered paper collages have the viewer guessing which geometric forms offer actual depth or just give the illusion of it. With names like "Color Chasm," "Gravity," and "Boxy Configurations," the artist acknowledges that playful deception that carries across the works in his new show at Thinkspace Projects, which runs through Oct. 5 at the space.
Kenyan-born, Brooklyn-based artist 
Douglas Hale multiplies, extends, and flips imagery to create kaleidoscopic and surrealist pictures. With his mind-bending configurations, it is no wonder he has been commissioned by Tessa Rose Jackson, Imagine Dragons, and Flyleaf to illustrate albums and merchandise. It is clear Hale has an interest in music, as many of his collages feature musicians like FKA Twigs and Erykah Badu. In these portraits, Hale adorns the singers with heavily ornate jewels and gold. Sparkle features prominently in Hale's collages, including those of ancient Greek portrait busts puking gold. These, like many of Hale's pictures, are set against rainbow backdrops and imbue his images with a dream-like 80s sentiment.