Exhibition Date: March 21, 2018
Curated by Toni Cormier
EVERYBODY KNOWS THAT
YOU CAN'T UNSCRAMBLE EGGS.
NEITHER CAN YOU UNSOUP
SOUP. THERE ARE A MILLION
THINGS YOU CAN'T UN.
-The Des Moines Register, Iowa, March 28, 1916
The revealing of a secret is a point of no return, it cannot be undiscovered as much as you cannot unscramble eggs. An irreversible shift raises the question: If you can't un-something, what can you do? This moment offers opportunity through a multitude of possible futures (and multiple presents). Somehow, the revealing will morph the expected, what is understood, what will never happen, what is swallowed. This permanent change of state is an event that requires a response, fostering a relationship between subject and object. Five artists were asked how they move productively forward after being confronted with this shift, using personal tools and methodologies to negotiate what cannot be undone. Each artist utilizes a relationship with something found or collected during an encounter (either day-to-day or during a pursuit of interest) as a way to access this shift of reality. The otherwise discreet object becomes a deviation from the expected, a lost translation, an estranged artifact, a moment of possibility, a radical connection.
Tess Eva Cournoyer
Proof 2 is a collection of objects and disposable photograph, taken from the streets during meandering ventures. Gathered from moments of wistful wandering, they are collected and rearranged in an attempt to revisit the moment of encounter, the inexplicable draw of curiosity that led to the accumulation of such objects in the first place, and re-situate such discoveries into a new context of narrative, understanding, and interpretation. Without any pragmatic reasoning, the objects become estranged artifacts of an alien motivation, and open up to a repurposed realm of meaning independent to the viewer.
Declan Hoy
Investigation of representation and time through the use of objects and images are conducted through the lens of speculative fiction, photography, and new materialism. Using this methodology, the investigations conducted manifest in quiet arrangements of things in space. In these sculptural and installation works, images are used as objects and objects are used to construct images, questioning the horological positioning of photographs and objects, and, imagining futures of representation.
Kaylee Maciejko
MOSPPRADS is a research and documentation society that examines vacant construction sites in search of MOSPPs: Moments of Speculative Possibility and Promise. The Society is interested in investigating perceived ruptures in the purported goals and actual outcomes of architectural and urban planning enterprises. This fictional organization follows an intense and vigorous practice-led research methodology that includes psychogeography, a ‘pataphysical approach to gathering conjectural data and the application of research findings through sculpture, photography, sound works and writing. The telos of this research is to foster a sensitive and intersectional dialogue around spatial production in urban landscapes.
Kerry Maguire
Replicated the optical properties of tinfoil/plastic become personal interpretations of objects. I think often of the replicator in Star Trek; with the push of a button, a meal, material or object appears. I see CMYK and print as some sort of optical replicator; although the actual functional properties of the object are not present, I have made some kind of movie set version of them. The “mystery” of the real-world creation of these material-objects is capitalist labour; the mystery of my CMYK replication is maybe just how four colours can trick us into seeing a multidimensional, full-colour entity.
Martina Westib
I explore the idea of the reservoir as a repository for matter. With the sink as a metaphor we can think of its form as a container for collected energies that are in varying states of release over time. My works are resonant bodies recording the moment of impact. They absorb instances of directional force and reverberate the dual nature of experience. Caught in cycles and outside of them simultaneously, they are fast and slow, touched and untouched as they retain and let go.