Cold Spell (2018 - 2019). Silver-gelatin photographic papers exposed to snow, rain, ice, and obscured sunlight. 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. Made with the support of the Ontario Arts Council. Exhibited at the Gladstone House, April 4 - 27, 2019.
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.