Exhibitions 1999 - 2000
March 16 - April 15, 2000
Multiplicity
Lynn Cazabon, Eugenie Shinkle
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| Eugenie Shinkle,
Ideal City (Somebody Else's Landscape), 1998, variable dimensions |
Multiplicity brings together photo-based constructions by American Lynn Cazabon and Canadian Eugenie Shinkle. While these artists possess different stylistic approaches, philosophical orientations and working methodologies, they employ similar strategies in order to transgress conventional photographic models. This is manifested primarily in their use of multiple fragments to build a larger whole, at once defying the notion of a stable, complete image and suggesting the possibility of infinite transmutations. Creating large ensembles made up of contact-size images, these artists deal with issues surrounding the traditional photographic genres of portrait and landscape by calling into question the cohesiveness of larger picture, and the social fabric it depicts. Employing techniques such as weaving and stitching in their physical construction, these works strongly reference textiles and patterns. The resulting forms-plaids and quilts-make a fitting analog for the social and perceptual patterns being investigated.
With the incorporation of video and film images, Cazabon alludes to representations as they occur in a time continuum-fluid and changing. By pulling the photographic object off the wall, Shinkle not only introduces the third dimension, but also implies a range of perspectives activated by the spectators movement through the gallery space. In denying us prescribed points of view, these artists challenge us to look critically at the ideology underlying photographic representations. As viewers, we are freed from the limitations of a single frame and given the invitation to explore a multiplicity of views.
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| Lynn Cazabon, Gasping/Grasping (detail), 1998, colour photograph, 40 x 30". |