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Jorden & David are both recent graduates from the UBC-O Fine Arts Department. Although each artist offers a uniquely individual approach to the discourse of visual arts, they share a common focus on the materialism of cultural codification. Their combined individual practices have been heavily influenced by world travel and the cross pollination of mass media, ritual and fetishistic cultures. Jorden & David Doody have worked exclusively as a collaborative team for the past seven years. Their practice moves freely from video to sculpture, painting and collage. This exhibition features work recently completed.
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Local writer, studio artist at Gallery Vertigo and instructor at Okanagan College, kevin mcpherson eckhoff presents an exhibition of "typortraits". The word, typortraits, describes an interesting body of works that reflects an equally interestinng aesthetic that straddles the border between art and text in a provocative and compelling exploration.
Artist Statement:
This series of portraits began in 2004, while I was finishing my bachelor’s degree at Okanagan University College. I had taken creative writing classes with Mary Ellen Holland and a “Special Topics in Sociology: Feminism” course with Patty Tomic, which encouraged me to think about the ways identity, the body, and language interact with one another. In my final project for the Sociology class, I included an image made using a single stencil cut out of sticker paper and inked using a typewriter. Since then, I began using multiple sticker stencils and various typing patterns in order to create more detailed images, most of which are faces of iconic artists, performers, and friends. (Eckhoff)
There are several writers and artists who have used typewriters as a visual rather than textual medium. Steve McCaffery’s two Carnival projects or Gert & Uwe Tobias’s surreal scenes both participate within abstract modes of art. My “typortraits” draw heavily upon principles of found poetry. The first portraits I created, Leon Trotsky and Woody Allen, were taken from late-sixties issues of Horizon magazine. I chose these two portraits primarily for practical reasons: the images were in black and white with fairly distinct shadow gradations and they fit well onto an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper. Moreover, both photos were accompanied by articles that offered suitable text for the typewriter portraits. (Eckhoff)
The other subjects I have featured in these portraits have entered my life through various avenues, from having conversations with friends to reading comics. I feel the aesthetics of found art encourage an attitude towards the world as a place of unanticipated beauty. The neologism of the series title, typortraits, points both to the typewriter as a means of artistic production and to the inevitability of error in representation: the typo. I hope that this work advocates the consideration of various intersections: text as art, happenstance as collaboration, identity as multifaceted. Lastly, I would like to thank the individuals who have helped these pieces make their way into the world via literary magazines and anthologies, including the editors at Descant and filling station, Rob McLennan at Chaudiere Books for Decalogue IIII, and Derek Beaulieu for Holy Beep and the № Press chapbook, typortraits. (Eckhoff) |
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Born in Vernon, B.C. Canada, Kevin Michael Witzke currently lives and works in Kelowna. He received a Diploma of Fine Arts from Okanagan University College in 2004 and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2007 from UBC Okanagan. A large abstract acrylic is on exhibition in the gallery's window on 30th Avenue this month.
Artist Statement:
I have to admit I have a fascination with colour and human history.
My studies in anthropology and archaeology have stirred my interest in subjects such as time, culture, language, myths, legends and folklore. My work delves into the human spirit and our relationship with the land and with each other. Working in combinations of paint, colour and light, I braid these ideas through my work. (Witzke)
As an abstract painter, “what” I paint often is abstract in nature. I find painting in an abstract way allows me to bypass our expectations of what something looks like, and explore the soul of the ideas I am working with. I like to use my canvases as if they were windows. This allows the painting to become a constructed world of energy for you peer into. I also explore how colour can help build meaning, mood and emotion within both my work and the viewer. I experiment with the optics colour with paint layers and unconventional painting techniques. (Witzke) |
