emerging artist 2001
| Curated
by Jennifer Long Sponsored by CONTACT 2001 May 2-26, 2001 Wagner Rosenbaum Gallery 169 King St E, 2F Toronto, Ontario |
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Exhibiting
Artists: |
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exhibition of work by Ontario-based conceptual artists takes an innovative
approach to the medium of photography. Ivan Jurakic’s View-Master is a diptych utilizing family photographs of the artists’ mother, a single young woman in her homeland, and father, a recent immigrant laborer to Canada. The contrast of pose, press, and setting elicits a contemplative moment of time and memory. Jurakic’s sculptural presentation and juxtaposition of imagery plays with notions of memory and transition. Michelle Kasprzak’s series Characters deals with the social status of the sited viewer in comparison to the blind viewer. Incorporating Braille into the images, Kasprzak elevates the status of the blind viewer by allowing them the privilege of touching the photograph. Her images, grainy portraits of lesser-known criminals downloaded from various Internet archives, show little of the subject to the sighted observer. "The main method of identifying criminal suspects today is a description of what they look like. In this series of images, only the blind can see beyond an image that says next to nothing." Jowita Kepa’s grid from the series Room takes a unique mathematical approach to photography. Inspired from various classical composers, Kepa’s approach to the production of aesthetics was devised from the addition and subtraction of images according to a preconceived mathematical formula. Mark Laliberte’s installation of Pillow Scenes incorporates sound, sculpture and photography into an intriguing piece. Each piece consists of a dark and mysterious photographic portrait, a pillow at the base of the portrait and a soundscape. "The power of this experimental approach to narrative exists in its ability to connect disparate things, to effectively create a unity where one might not normally exist." Amy Satterthwaite "armed only with a flimsy xacto knife and a 35mm camera loaded with slide film, I walked around my neighborhood and took stock of the poster situation, with which I’d become quite obsessed. Randomly, I would take my knife and dig it as deep as I could into a postered wall, cutting out a shape that consisted of as many layers of paper as I could manage. Stepping back, I would then take a photograph of what I left behind." Documents by Wendy Wong deals with the creation of constructed evidence. Inspired by crime scene stories, Wong has created dark suggestive imagery, which develops intriguing conceptions and misconceptions of various synarios. Photographing iconic figures such as Hitler and J.F.K in wax museums, Wong has recreated crimes scene of like images through a series of negative manipulations such as burning and scratching. "I am less interested in searching for real ‘truths’ and more interested in inventing them. Truth is never simply the result of an accumulation of facts, it |
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