Paper Value

Paper Value: The work of Yuken Teruya This paper asks: How can Yuken Teruya’s art allow us to construct critical frameworks that subvert forces of desire through a mode of revealing. For around decade Teruya has worked with paper in varying found forms. The paper in Teruya’s work plays with paper’s duality of being, it is on the one hand powerful and enduring in an abstract sense (legal documents, bank notes) and, also powerless and disposable in other forms (tissues, wrapping). As a material and as a subject it is also mutable, malleable and surprisingly durable. When thinking of Teruya’s artwork, it is important to bear in mind the common phrase that refers to the “paper value” of things - “paper value” operates as an abstract notion of worth, in tension with the real or exchangeable value of things. The inherent contradictions within the “paper value” of things is the abstract power of paper that Teruya’s work discusses. For over a decade Teruya has produced work that relies on intricate cutting and reforming of found paper artefacts, whose power is the ability to generate forces of desire, for example; bank notes, newspapers and product packaging. The cuts allow the paper to be reformed into objects that then provoke the audience to re-value the abstract, symbolic and material worth of the paper’s value. This paper explores how Teruya’s work cuts both physically and metaphorically into powerful paper artefacts as a mode of revealing that effectively defaces their illusion of desirability.