Daniel Greenfeld’s artworks aren’t collages, they’re mosaics made of paper scraps

When describing his precise illustrative works with paper, Berlin based artist Daniel Greenfeld doesn’t quite pin his technique down as “collage”, he tells us. “The material isn’t layered, but something between assemblage and inlaid mosaic,” he says. “I cut up painted cardstock to make my pieces, slicing out cavities so new shapes can be embedded and glued in.” Carefully tiled up from these precious scraps, his architectural observations of everyday faces, places and fruit have come to create quite the circular illustration process: “Every new piece sends its offcuts back into the scrap bin, waiting to turn up in the next one, and the scraps get more intricate the longer I work this way,” he shares.

If you look at any of the artist’s abstract works under the magnifying glass, you’ll see that these small paper scraps have been smushed and squeezed tightly alongside each other like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle – some look cosy, but some are simply the perfect fit. Whilst clean and constructivist from afar there is a roughness and imperfection to the artist’s works that makes them feel less intricate up close. Shards of paper stuff smudges or crumples against each other where Daniel has fixed them into place with glue – a mess he likes to “embrace” to keep from getting “too precious or second guessing myself”, the artist says.

This ongoing series of paper mosaics started somewhat by chance. As part of his studio practice, Daniel builds 3D lamps and sculptures using the natural shape of offcuts with quite the same spirit – the aftermath of which is a debris that constantly covers his studio floor with a whole host of interesting shapes. One day, this perspective inspired him to take a break from working in 3D. “I picked out my favorite shapes and gathered them into flat abstract compositions – at first leaving as much empty as filled. The whole time I kept thinking about archaeology, and what it must be like to find ancient ruins and have to piece them back together, guessing at what existed in the missing spaces,” he says. The problem solving nature of building a scene out of just what he has, and nothing more, is the motivating factor for Daniel. The idea that there might be “a complete original design” just waiting in the rubble is what keeps the artist coming back to this process again and again.