November 19, 2026 – January 10, 2027 

Opening Reception: Thursday, November 19, 6-8pm

Preview works in the exhibition here.

Download the exhibition statement here.

Planthouse is pleased to present WORK., an exhibition of new works on paper by Anders Bergstrom, made in collaboration with Dieu Donné, alongside a selection of Bergstrom’s earlier prints.

For more than a decade, Bergstrom has used the brown paper
bag as both subject and material provocation. An object of everyday
utility—cheap, ubiquitous, and disposable—, in his work, it becomes
a subject of close examination. . His painstaking prints reproduce the
creases, folds, seams, stains, labels, and other incidental marks of
the bag, bringing the highly considered language of printmaking to an
object that is ordinarily overlooked. The resulting tension between
the ordinary and the precious, the functional and the aesthetic, is cen-
tral to Bergstrom’s practice.

These new works grew out of an invitation from Dieu Donné—the
legendary New York center for collaborative hand papermaking—for
Bergstrom to work directly with its master papermakers. Through
this exchange, he has extended his longstanding investigation of the
brown paper bag into the realm of fine art papermaking. Every work
is unique, while sharing a consistent handmade process developed in
collaboration with Dieu Donné: pigmented cotton and unbleached abaca are formed into sheets and worked with linen pulp paint and wa-
termarking. The process allows Bergstrom to retain the recognizable
structure and vocabulary of the paper bag while making the physical
character of paper itself an active part of the piece.

Each sheet bears the evidence of its making. Variations in the pulp,
pigment, surface, and watermark distinguish one work from another,
resulting in individual objects rather than repeated impressions. The
familiar image of the brown paper bag is thus translated from some-
thing mass-produced and disposable into something singular and ma-
terially considered.

The collaboration also foregrounds a fundamental concern of
Bergstrom’s practice: the relationship between image and labor. The
familiar appearance of the paper bag belies the time, skill, and ac-
cumulation of decisions required to reconstruct it. Working alongside
Dieu Donné’s master papermakers, Bergstrom brings this relation-
ship directly into the process of making, transforming an everyday ob-
ject through the labor-intensive traditions of handmade paper.

Presented alongside selected earlier prints, the new works cre-
ate a dialogue across Bergstrom’s evolving engagement with the bag.
The exhibition moves between representation and material, edition
and unique object, mechanical reproduction and hand labor. Across
the works, an ordinary object is made strange and unfamiliar through
sustained attention.

Brown Bag, 2026
Pigmented cotton and unbleached abaca, linen pulp paint, watermark
6 1/2h x 4 1/2w x 4d in

Created in collaboration with Dieu Donné, New York. Photograph by Tejan Rahim.