Plaintiff 1958

Jean Dubuffet created this strange figure, Plaintiff, from printed paper—a sort of collage where dark, mottled textures meet smoother, flatter planes of beige. I can imagine Dubuffet piecing this together, shuffling bits of paper like a deck of cards, searching for that just-right configuration. What was he thinking, as he puzzled it all out? Maybe he was after something primal, something raw. The hands are so strange. Are they pleading, or casting a spell? The surface is rough, almost violent. It’s definitely a world away from the sleek, easy surfaces we’re so used to these days. I think about Kurt Schwitters, also a big fan of collage. There’s a similar impulse to find beauty in the discarded, the overlooked. It's all just a part of a conversation stretching back and forward across time. In the end, this is a space for feeling, for letting meanings shift and settle in their own time.