Cold Spell (November 2018 - March 2019). Silver-gelatin photographic papers exposed to snow, rain, ice, and obscured sunlight, 20x24 inches each. Exposure times range from a few minutes to one hour, and include the passage of naturals events like blizzards, late winter thaws and snow showers. Exhibited at the Gladstone House, April 4 - 27, 2019. Made with the support of the Ontario Arts Council.
Exhibition essay by Juan Camillo Garza
Like taxidermy, or a wolf removed from its howl, light recorded on its own is without living dimension | Everything that exists burns to produce true records; even the stones that wear down our soles | are like paws clawing the earth for food and posterity, hunting their reminders into the side of our boots | And though light shows us what’s in front of us, real clarity is a nail embraced barefoot in the dark | Real proof of living--real clarity--leaves marks, like the edges of snow and rock to paper.
The organic forms born from these experiments, much like photos, are moments trapped in amber | but more than a photo--which lives like a butterfly pinned with its wings in a case--here there are marks | Here there are scratches that wound the image, strange colours born from raw embrace | Here there are images born from wrestling nature, visual records of a natural earth without obstacle | Here, ultimately, nature is revealed as a participant -- As much a part of work as the paper itself.
In nature, everything begs the camera to fall apart, because a camera is too perfect for the outdoors | And so here it is removed. Everything is removed. Everything except what is necessary to record | Light-sensitive paper, daylight, a jacket, hands, eyes, shoes, the world, curiosity | By shaving away the instruments of the practice, everything is distilled down to the most essential, | until there is nothing left but what is necessary-- until any less would just be nature itself.
The images display an estranged relationship between humans and the natural world | Truly, in order to create any of the pieces, the artist must be violent against nature | In the work, natural objects are scrapped against the treated paper like teeth to an enemy | And so perhaps the images are a reminder of our capacity for both destruction and creation | A reminder that the hands that create are the very same that can destroy.
Maybe there is magic in the frost, in the way it stains paper | and how every chemical and rock wades through lifetimes to meet together | and stain the purple pages in a strange rendezvous | Between the natural and the chemical, perhaps, there is something more than either alone | Past the human, past the cold, past the natural, past the camera, maybe there is magic.