Soft Turns

Soft Turns is the collaborative effort of Wojciech Olejnik and Sarah Jane Gorlitz. Alongside simple mechanisms —pulleys, mirrors, paper, lenses—and crucially, their own bodies, they use stop-motion animation’s capacity to stretch and collapse time, to attempt to get as close as possible to the rhythms of their subjects. The results are slow-paced, immersive, intimate video-centred installations. Recent research interests include: controlled artificial environments such as greenhouses and data centres, plant-human interactions and the physics of information. Feature articles about their work have been published in Canadian Art and Esse. Their work has been exhibited across Canada and internationally, most recently at the Plumb (Toronto, 2021) 8eleven (Images Festival, 2018), and The Art Museum at the University of Toronto (2018). Sarah Jane is a white settler of English and Menonite descent and Wojciech immigrated from Poland as an adolescent. Together, they have been privileged to live and participate in several communities abroad and in Canada, including a pivotal three year residency at the School of Environmental Sciences, University of Guelph (2016-19). They currently work and live with their two young daughters in the Lakeshore Village Artist Co-op, on the lands of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples, in what is commonly referred to as Toronto.

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For the first time, Gallery 44’s Artist-in-Residence and Writer-in-Residence programs will be paired to explore and develop mutual research interests. Both residency programs will unfold over two years, beginning in January 2023 and concluding in December 2024. The ambition of the renewed residency program is to offer thoughtful insight into artistic research processes and support longer periods of reflection and research for artists and writers. Both programs will be augmented with public programming to be announced throughout the residency term.

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