By: Katie Walkley, Peak Associate
From July 3–26, the Audain Gallery is displaying six SFU artists’ works inspired by Clarice Lispector’s short postmodern text, Report on the Thing (1974). Her story questions the way we define categories and split things that are part of a larger whole. To illustrate her point, she discusses how her digital clock divides time, which, in reality, is “immutable.” Her topic of refuting labels is extremely difficult to write about since words themselves are inherently labels. So, through visual art, SFU students Constance Arden, Caroline Chernega, Chelsea MacKay, Carlo Marchet, Taha Saraei, and Kaleb Thiessen have jointly brought to life Lispector’s philosophy to the public at the Report on the Thing exhibition.
In an exhibition that aims to dismantle our ideas of categories, walking through it feels as if you are existing within a grander artistic expression, the viewer themselves inevitably a part of the artwork.
As soon as you enter, you can hear a faint sound from an artist’s short film playing at the back. Its placement makes it so that you cannot figure out the context until you have already seen all of the other artwork. Thus, it becomes a soundtrack that weaves together each piece. The sound itself contains a bell repeating sporadically along with white noise that makes the entire gallery feel a bit unnerving. Something about that discomfort immersed me in the moment to look into the details.
“Something about that discomfort immersed me in the moment.”
On the way to the source of the strange noises, the oil painting Wet Life by Caroline Chernega pulled me in with an exciting composition that had me turning my head in every angle. The artist’s inspiration came from collaging photos chosen randomly to blend our inner and outer worlds. She conveys her message through brushstrokes that are so expressive that the underpainting shines through. This in itself flattens time so the viewer can see every stage of the painting all at once.
After looking at Chernega’s distortion of time, I went on to the sculptural piece OOO by Chelsea Mackay, which blurs the lines between the living and the object. The chair, covered by a skin-like latex membrane, is attached to a mirror so that as you walk around it, your perception places it in front of different backgrounds. Since the chair is no longer useful to sit on, is it still a chair? I do have to admit that sometimes these metaphysical questions can feel too speculative for me. However, this gallery did a great job of turning the hyper philosophical into something real, tangible, and visible.
Finally, once I went around the wall, I discovered the source of the ambient noise. The two-minute video, I have been waiting for hours, by Constance Arden compiles static shots of her neighbourhood, Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Some zoom in the objects, while others pan out, so that you cannot tell what they are. One shot begins far away from a sign so that you cannot read it. Then, it enlarges to be legible for just a moment before zooming in even closer so that it becomes indecipherable again. This shot made me think of how the most obvious meanings can only be understood from specific perspectives. We tend to look at things from one point of view, but this clip along with the entire gallery makes you realize how much can be revealed if you examine the mundane as if you’ve never seen it before.
If you want to enter a world that gives you the same feeling as those rare reality-bending midnight conversations with your friends, the Report on the Thing exhibition is the place to be. There are many more splendid pieces that I didn’t write about, so do yourself a favour and go check the exhibition out before it ends.
