This is an excellent opportunity to view an exciting, new generation of artists, working in media such as printmaking, drawing, installation and painting. This year’s exhibition features the work of Sylvia Grace Borda, Keith Langergraber, Daphne Locke and Misa Nikolic.
Sylvia Grace Borda presents work from the series Barcodes. CMYK refers to the colors cyan, magenta, yellow and black, which are used in an additive manner to create printed process colors. Each work in the series consists of two adjacent squares of monochrome process color. Borda’s minimalist prints are drawn entirely by hand on a computer. In Barcodes, Borda playfully exaggerates the size, scale and colour of product barcodes from Campbell soup labels. The seemingly abstract arrangements of lines bear some resemblance to Neo-Geo abstract art of the early 1980s. In this way, the bar code form becomes a kind of versatile visual language that is treated as a “found form.”
Keith Langergräber’s recent work involves an installation that documents and explores a site of mining activity in the Sandon area of the West Kootenays. A miner’s shed from Sandon will be reassembled for the exhibition and accompanied by objects collected from the site. The installation will also include a large map dotted with pins indicating mineral deposits and mining activities as well as photographs and drawings of on-site artifacts. Langergräber’s work alludes to and subverts Robert Smithson’s engagement with decaying and entropic sites by further engaging with the museological permutations of the non-site.
Daphne Locke’s work involves mixed-media representations of the labyrinth as a symbol, a myth, a puzzle, and a map. These representations present the labyrinth as a space of both private contemplation and a reference to movement through physical space. Utilizing such diverse media as steel, wood, wax, charcoal and ink, Locke’s two and three-dimensional works point to the impact of the ancient symbol of the labyrinth on contemporary culture.
Miša Nikolic’s paintings of machinery, factories and bridges deal with the problematic relationship between industrialism and representation. With reference to Francis Picabia, Russian Constructivism and American Precisionism, Nikolic’s work presents a visualization of the ways in which industrial objects and structures manifest the symbolic order of capital.
An illustrated exhibition catalogue with essays by Jeremy Todd, Mark Trakner, Sadira Rodriques, Melanie O’Brian and an introduction by Hamed Teymouri will be available for sale.