Trevor Mahovsky and Rhonda Weppler: The Searchers

Dysfunctional Chairs series
May 15 to September 26, 2010

Artists Trevor Mahovsky and Rhonda Weppler have been working collaboratively since 2004 – almost a decade after their days in graduate art school at UBC. For their commission in our Dysfunctional Chairs series, they proposed that their chairs are dysfunctional because they are absent. Instead, the architecture of the Kelowna Art Gallery itself substitutes as seating for a series of sculptures. At press time, the work exists in a model form only, in which five individuals appear to perch on the edge of the roof of the courtyard, with their legs dangling into the space. While they may call to mind teens loitering at a mall, the artists also have a more high-culture reference in mind: that of angels or cherubs frolicking on the European Baroque ceiling paintings in churches or palaces.

The notion of absence has been a constant thread in their collaborative sculptural work since the two artists began their joint practice several years ago. The human figure, however, is a new element, introduced for the first time in their Flatlands piece from earlier this year, which was exhibited at the Pari Nadimi Gallery in Toronto. Since the year 2000, the collaborative work of Trevor Mahovsky and Rhonda Weppler has been the focus of many solo shows. It has also been included in group shows at public galleries across Canada and, more recently, internationally. Their work is represented by the Pari Nadimi Gallery in Toronto.

For our Dysfunctional Chairs series, The Kelowna Art Gallery acknowledges the support of the Vancouver Foundation.