Spirochete by Reinhold Pinter is reminiscent of Buddhist mandalas

In the downtown apartment of Reinhold (Les) Pinter, an expansive installation of white paper cut-outs dominates a sky blue wall. This is an installation in progress, tentatively titled Nebula, which has so far claimed three by four metres and more than 500 hours of the artist’s time.

To say cutouts is an understatement. Pinter’s Nebula is a masterful work of surgical precision, with intricate repeating 2.5 by 5 centimetre shapes cut by hand with an X-Acto knife. It’s an ambitious piece that is all the more amazing considering the fact that Pinter puts in 10-hour days at his day job as manager and curator of travelling exhibitions for the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.

For the last seven years, Pinter has organized touring exhibitions of Alberta artists to schools and communities around southern Alberta. Although this leaves little time for him to get his own work into the public eye, it hasn’t slowed down his creative practice.

Complete cut-out works are displayed across the room. One piece titled Spirochete consists of vertically striped coloured paper into which repeating cutouts spiral in a configuration that is reminiscent of Buddhist mandalas. Those cut-outs expose the white wall and transform the bands of coloured paper into an intricate lace-like presentation. Integrated into this complex paper tapestry, Pinter has incised another repeating pattern that forms a horizon of waves and another intersecting strand of cut-out shapes as a final twisting detail.

In another series, Pinter integrates symbolic elements from two national or state flag combinations (such as Israel and Palestine), and then unifies them by cutting motifs into them. He next pries open the lid of one of many storage crates to expose a hybridized U.S.- Canada cut paper banner that rests on top of an impressive stack of similar works.

In another corner sits a one metre tall, three-dimensional sculpture constructed entirely of blue cardstock cutouts that are fashioned into a partly inverted baby carriage.

Close inspection of the cutout designs reveal hundreds of repeating and overlapping pictograms that resemble the angularity of Mayan symbols. Pinter offers a sampling of cutout templates that fit easily into the palm of my hand. Each delicate template can be read as a character. There’s a “running man” whose ribcage exposes the spaces between, like the smoldering skeletal remains of the twin towers. There is the “SOS guy” who cries for help as he is confined within an intricately cut border that spells out “EYE 4 A N EYE.” The “saboteur” is a rat-shaped figure with a lit stick of dynamite that protrudes from his snout. He is camouflaged and at the same time exposed as part of the pattern.

Some of the messages underlying Pinter’s work are inspired by television because he sees media as being responsible for shaping our personal realities. “Consciousness is affected by what is on the news,” he says. Then he places a grid of cutouts on the glass surface of his television to demonstrate how he screens the programs he watches. The cutouts exist as a kind of fusion between icon and symbol, text and texture, sensation and spectacle, politics and humanity.

Pinter’s magnificent paper tapestries are strikingly fragile and powerfully presented. He acknowledges that he could utilize industrial methods to produce his works, however, he prefers to pay homage to handcrafted paper-cutting as seen in folk and fine art traditions dating from 6th century China. While Pinter currently lacks the gallery representation that could introduce his work to a larger audience, Pinter’s art stands equal to other cutting edge (pun intended) paper works by contemporary artists such Kara Walker, David Adjave, and Su Blackwell.

Peer Review is a series of articles about Calgary artists who maintain rigorous professional careers but are likely unfamiliar to the public, often because they do not have a gallery in the city.

Laurel Smith is a Calgary-based artist who makes minimal-ornamental paintings.