Kirk Fanelly‘s recent, vibrant works are constructed with inlaid cut paper, offering a glimpse at the Western experience through the artist’s intricate process. This mode of creation is a fairly recent development for the artist, who previously mixed the surreal and the everyday in oil paintings.
“I wouldn’t categorize it as ‘collage’ because the tension isn’t in disparate materials or imagery, but rather in the flatness and hard edges of the same material—like many painting styles,” the artist said, in an interview with HappeningsCLT. “I’d just say I’m a painter working mostly with paper for now. The current work evolved from some earlier stenciled and masked painted surfaces. There’s still some narrative that was the impetus for much of my early work. There are also some new pieces that appear abstract, but are still dependent on observation and physical objects. I find myself increasingly reflecting how wonderfully bizarre the natural world is rather than just mining the human narrative.”
The artist has been part of recent shows at Greenhill Center for NC Art and Lee Hansley Gallery. The artist is currently based in Charlotte, N.C.
As the Tang dynasty disintegrated, Chinese artists sought permanence within nature, retreating into the mountains to find a sanctuary from real world chaos. Following in the footsteps of her creative heritage, Beijing based artist Fu Xiaotong updates traditional Chinese landscape painting with a modern twist. Using only a tiny needle, she meticulously pierces thousands of pinholes into large sheets of Xuan paper in a repetitive manner similar to Pointillism. It's difficult to appreciate the scale and detail of her work through these images alone, some measuring larger than Xiaotong herself, who stands on a tall ladder to reach the peaks of waves and mountain tops that each picture depicts.
Armed with just paper and scissors, collagist Lola Dupre continues to remix photographs into surreal portraits—with some of the most absorbing results in reimagining household pets. Elsewhere, editorial and advertising projects shows the broad application of Dupre’s distinct sensibilities. She was last featured in Hi-Fructose's print magazine with 
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.