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Tension
Mixte
May 3 to June 1, 2002
The
Kelowna Art Gallery is pleased to participate as an additional venue for Tension
Mixte.
Tension
Mixte is an
exhibition exchange between Kelowna’s Alternator
Gallery and the Circa Centre d’Exposition Art Contemporain in Montréal.
This exhibition highlights work by eight artists in two different
provinces. From their various practices and perspectives, many of these artists
address the idea of contemporary identity and the spaces that we, as members of
contemporary society, inhabit.
Maurice
Achard, curator of the Circa Centre has selected works by four young
up-and-coming Quebec artists for exhibit at the Alternator Gallery in Kelowna
between May 3 and June 1. These artists are Michel de Broin, Valérie Kolakis,
Manuela Lalic and Ève K. Tremblay. The companion exhibition of this exchange,
entitled Mediate, will be hosted by the Circa Centre from June 1 to June
29. It has been guest curated by Susan Edelstein who has chosen works by Kelowna
based artists Renée Burgess, Briar Craig, Byron Johnston, and Jeffrey Norgren.
The
Kelowna Art Gallery is pleased to be able to participate in Tension Mixte
by hosting work by two Montréal based artists in the Rotary Courtyard between
May 3 and June 1.
| Valérie
Kolakis’ work
is entitled Drops (2002, resin) and is visible on the surrounding
windows of the Rotary Courtyard. Kolakis’ work reflects the changing yet
repetitive qualities of passing time including memory and the awareness of
loss. Essentially, the artist is interested in “the idea of absence
of presence and the presence of absence and of the space(s) in-between.” For
Kolakis absence, like loss, is located between memory and oblivion,
appearance and disappearance. Working obsessively and repetitively with
everyday objects like wax, wool and rope, the artist manipulates her
materials to create faint auras of impressions that act upon the viewer
like subtle tinges left by distant memories. |
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| Manuela
Lalic’s work is entitled A Refreshing Reject (2002, mixed
media) and is located inside the Rotary Courtyard. Lalic sculpts with
banal items such as adhesive tape, elastic bands and toothpicks. In
her repetitive and labor-intensive work, the artist explores issues of
conformity and individuality in contemporary society. A Refreshing
Reject is a site specific installation constructed out of plastic
tablecloths, styrofoam cups, an outdoor camping chair, folding table and
tin cans. According to the artist: “the sculpture takes the form of a
landscape. It is meant to symbolise a contamination or an overflow of a
picnic on two different scales. The first one is a model of consumerism,
and the second corresponds to the scale of the human body. It is an ironic
picnic that wishes to question the interaction between the individual and
the collective through over-consumption.” |
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More works by these and other artists are presently on view at the Alternator
Gallery. A bilingual publication of this exhibition is available.
The
artists would like to thank the Consulat Général de France à Vancouver, the
Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québéc and the Canada Council for the Arts.
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