Lotte Van den Audenaeren, Untitled, 2016, Digital print on silk.
Beyond the barrier of sound and soon, of light
Matthew Buckingham, Tatiana Grigorenko, Mami Takahashi, Lotte Van den Audenaeren and Charlene Vickers
Guest curated by Natasha Chaykowski
September 16 to October 22, 2016
Opening Reception September 16, 8pm
Performance – Occupy Anishinabe Park 1974, by Charlene Vickers, October 1 – Victoria Park, in collaboration with Nuit Blanche Saskatoon
We come to know of disappearance through that which remains: the traces left in the wake of the disappeared, records—however delicate, immaterial and temporary—etched onto the various surfaces of the world or enshrined within the bodies and grey stuff of those who endure.
Beyond the barrier of sound and soon, of light brings together works by Canadian and international artists that speak to the complicated states of in-betweenness and irresolution that are invoked by the phenomenon of disappearance. Respectively, these artists grapple with the contours of the trace and its relationship to the body; monumentality and the impossible plight of duration in the textures of history; the minable agency in choosing to disappear; and empowerment in re-establishing a presence of the body where violent forces have attempted to instigate its disappearance. At the material limits of these politics of disappearance is a metaphysical proposal: a transcending of matter, an existence beyond the strict barriers of sound and light.
Matthew Buckingham was born in Nevada, Iowa, and currently lives in New York City. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, received a BA from the University of Iowa, an MFA from Bard College and attended the Whitney Independent Study Program. Utilizing photography, film, video, audio, writing and drawing, his work questions the role that social memory plays in contemporary life. His projects create physical and social contexts that encourage viewers to question what is most familiar to them. Recent works have investigated the Indigenous past and present in the Hudson River Valley; the “creative destruction” of the city of St. Louis; and the inception of the first English dictionary.
Tatiana Grigorenko’s interdisciplinary work focuses on the relationship between the individual and his world within an over-arching social-political context. Born in the United States to a family of Soviet political dissidents, history, especially the history of repression, is central to her practice. She is interested in how one navigates and eventually emancipates one’s body, identity and memory from the context of predefined social models and “official” histories, discourses and hegemonic narratives. Through collage, photography, video and text, her work examines revolt, resistance, power dynamics and ultimately, their common underlying thread: the search for utopia.
Mami Takahashi received her MFA in Contemporary Studio Practice from Portland State University in 2013. She earned a BFA in Japanese painting from Joshibi University of Art and Design (Japan) where she was awarded a prize for her thesis work. Takahashi also obtained an Associate of Fine Art in Aesthetics from Aoyama-gakuin Women’s College (Japan). Her works has been collected and exhibited internationally.
Lotte Van den Audenaeren investigates time and presence by amplification of the momentary. She is a graduate of LUCA School of Arts in Brussels, and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts KASK in Ghent. Van den Audenaeren has participated in international solo and group exhibitions at NURTUREart, VOLTA, ISCP, and Larissa Goldston Gallery (NYC); Illuminus (Boston); InstantCoffee (Vancouver); CC Strombeek (Brussels); Unicredit Pavillon (Bucharest); and SMAK (Ghent). She has undertaken residencies in Canada, China, Europe, Mexico and the United States and completed public commissions for the City Council of New York in 2012, and Brussels Capital Region in 2014. Some recent projects include Mirror Stage (Brussels); sound meteors (Shanghai); ALL STONES WILL BE RETURNED (Boston); and the timekeeper (Brussels).
Charlene Vickers is an Anishnabe artist based in Vancouver, BC Canada. Charlene is an MFA grad at Simon Fraser University and is on the Board of Directors at grunt gallery. This past spring 2016, Vickers was selected as the inaugural artist in residence at Griffin Art Projects in North Vancouver creating a series of expansive abstract paintings, plus a new performance work with Chad MacQuarrie called Portals and Improvisations.
Natasha Chaykowski is a Calgary-based writer and curator. Previously, she’s worked with Canadian Art, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Banff Centre, in curatorial and editorial capacities. She was the 2014 co-recipient, with Alison Cooley, of the Middlebrook Prize for Young Canadian Curators. Currently, she is Director of Untitled Art Society.
