untitled (jefferson memorial) hand-cut ledger paper dimensions variable (approx: 5.25” x 5.5” x 6.5”) 2010

using ledger paper as her medium, american artist jill sylvia re-creates significant U.S. buildings as a means of exploring society’s serial structure, financial architecture, capital as an ungrounded sign and value in general. for each work, sylvia meticulously cuts out the spaces within the lines of each cell – typically host to numerical figures and other accounting data used for recording financial transactions. the results are structural skeletons of the U.S. treasury, new york stock exchange and the white house to name a few. the choice to represent these particular structures directly addresses issues surrounding debt and transparency and the consequences, along with economic pursuits as is evidenced by the grid of windows left behind from the artist’s removal of tens of thousands of these boxes from the material which is strongly associated with economics.

‘when I started this work, (before I began to use the pages to construct buildings and national monuments), my process was a way of attempting to understand our need to quantify our transactions. I would involve myself in a routine of trying to make time and labor palpable while communicating its loss.  I was, and am, interested in the way that resulting voids might suggest that the methods we employ to arrange our world provide more insight into ourselves than that which we seek to organize.’  – jill sylvia

jill sylvia: intricately cut ledger paper structures untitled (jefferson memorial) detail hand-cut ledger paper dimensions variable (approx: 5.25” x 5.5” x 6.5”) 2010

jill sylvia: intricately cut ledger paper structures untitled (U.S. capitol building) hand-cut ledger paper dimensions variable (approx: 8.5” x 15” x 7”) 2008

jill sylvia: intricately cut ledger paper structures untitled (U.S. capitol building) detail hand-cut ledger paper dimensions variable (approx: 8.5” x 15” x 7”) 2008

jill sylvia: intricately cut ledger paper structures untitled (U.S. treasury building) hand-cut ledger paper dimensions variable (approx: 4.5” x 16” x 9”) 2009

jill sylvia: intricately cut ledger paper structures untitled (U.S. treasury building) detail hand-cut ledger paper dimensions variable (approx: 4.5” x 16” x 9”) 2009

jill sylvia: intricately cut ledger paper structures untitled (white house) hand-cut ledger paper dimensions variable (approx: 4” x 11” x 6.5”) 2007

jill sylvia: intricately cut ledger paper structures untitled (white house) detail hand-cut ledger paper dimensions variable (approx: 4” x 11” x 6.5”) 2007

jill sylvia: intricately cut ledger paper structures new york stock exchange hand-cut ledger paper dimensions variable (approx: 12” x 7.75” x 5.5”) 2011

jill sylvia: intricately cut ledger paper structures new york stock exchange detail hand-cut ledger paper dimensions variable (approx: 12” x 7.75” x 5.5”) 2011

jill sylvia: intricately cut ledger paper structures federal hall hand-cut ledger paper dimensions variable (approx: 5.5” x 4.5” x 12”) 2011

jill sylvia: intricately cut ledger paper structures federal hall detail hand-cut ledger paper dimensions variable (approx: 5.5” x 4.5” x 12”) 2011