Elevating the traditional Filipino craft of paper cutting to a fine art form, Ryan Villamael is driven by the conceptual elements of paper cutting. He builds frieze-like shapes and patterns using negative space, and is only able to see a small segment of a larger, folded whole while he works. Villamael’s “Flatland” series addresses spatial bounds and the rapid organic, unpredictable growth of urban areas, employing a Rorschach-like symmetry to create cityscapes that appear to unfold endlessly. Upland (2012), a work within the “Flatland” series, is comprised of three tree-shaped wooden frames, hung against paper cutouts of mountains and filled with layered paper that has been cut to mimic a body’s internal organs, resulting in three seemingly living paper sculptures which reference a living, breathing, growing, and dying environment.