Match-Up: New Works on Paper in Dialogue

This exhibition presents a selection of prints, drawings, and photographs that were donated to The Columbus Museum in the past two and a half years. Displayed in pairs or trios, these works on paper affirm and extend art historian Heinrich Wölfflin’s belief that bringing objects together, rather than studying them individually and without context, draws attention to similarities and differences in subject, media, and style. These visual parallels and disparities then help produce a more complex understanding of human cultural production.

Since its inception, the internet has fostered “borrowing” words and pictures from their original contexts and repurposing them elsewhere, such as a social media page, a meme generator, or a slide presentation. The World Wide Web contains a seemingly inexhaustible amount of writing, sounds, still images, and videos. Newsfeeds, online museum collections, and photo sharing apps are just a few sources of text and images that can then be joined in new combinations. Inspired by the global phenomenon of “mashups”––digital remixes of two popular songs, often quite different in subject matter or musical style––Match-Up invites viewers to reflect upon the power of juxtaposition and its role in our contemporary cut-and-paste culture.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website