David Spriggs, Vision, 2010, white acrylic paint, display case, springs, lights, transparent film, 264 x 315 x 91 cm.
Courtesy the artist and gallery Art Mûr, Montreal.

Fall Exhibitions at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery

Join us on Friday, September 23 for the opening reception of two new fall exhibits, The Limits and We All Fall Down. The evening will begin with an Artist Talk presented by David Spriggs at 7:00 p.m., followed by opening remarks at 8:00 p.m. Admission to exhibitions and all events is free and everyone is welcome.

The Limits: Tracing Time and Seeing Space
Kristan Horton , Spring Hurlbut, Lani Maestro, Jani Ruscica, Alyson Shotz,
David Spriggs, Kerry Tribe
Curated by Crystal Mowry
September 16, 2011 – January 8, 2012

"Denying temporal succession, denying the self, denying the astronomical universe, are apparent desperations and secret consolations... Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire."

- J.L. Borges, "A New Refutation of Time," 1946

The Limits takes as its point of departure artistic investigations of finitude. A limit, in its most rudimentary definition, is understood as a boundary or constraint. Often abstract, a limit might be thought of as a conceptual apparatus, a way of distinguishing an individual's discrete position from that which lies beyond their knowledge or experience.

Using film, photography, sculpture and drawing, the artists in The Limits offer poetic proposals for understanding the intersection of space and time – often thought of as the two most fundamental boundaries we encounter. Kristan Horton and Kerry Tribe explore the echo of history and the gaps between events and their various transcriptions. Jani Ruscica and David Spriggs create analogies for the cosmos, one through a theatrical narrative of evolution, the other through sculpture which combines the instantaneous and the static. Straddling sculptural and the pictorial realms, Alyson Shotz and Lani Maestro evoke images of an infinite, undulating expanse of space which seems to resist the passing of time. Spring Hurlbut's photographs, which serve as both an entrance and an exit to the exhibition, suggest both an inevitable mortal limit and the seemingly unquantifiable nature of the cosmos. Like a story told through the familiar childhood game of "broken telephone," each work in this exhibition whispers its perception of time and space to the next, with errors and intentional inconsistencies accumulating along the way.

Visit the Gallery all this fall for an exciting line-up of public programming inspired by The Limits:

Walk the Talk, a guided Gallery tour: Thurs, Sept 29, 7 pm
Reading and book-signing with Christopher Dewdney, Governor General's Award nominee and author of The Soul Of The World: Thurs, Oct 6, 7 pm
Curator's Talk and Tour: Thurs, Nov 10, 7 pm

We All Fall Down
Curated by Barbara Hobot & Cindy Wayvon
September 3, 2011 – March 4, 2012

This exhibition of works from the Gallery's permanent collection has been brought together to examine how and why artists choose to depict moments of frailty, deterioration, or death, rather than potential or vitality. This selection defiantly counters the widespread urge to avoid signs of aging or natural decline.

Several of the works evoke the potential for rebirth or a new life form through death. In others, the artists use their work as a means to imagine their own demise. George Hawken's Self Portrait 5 traces the artist's every wrinkle in a flurry of tangled lines. His resigned expression and nervous mark-making emphasize the disintegration of his own image.

Some pieces conjure both a moment of glory and a period of decline simultaneously. While experiencing the depiction of a monument in ruins, as in Francis Frith's albumen prints from 1857, one cannot help but imagine what these Egyptian temples looked like in their prime.

Other works point to themes of beauty within destruction. Paul Fournier's delicate and detailed etching of a dead crow is an example of how something as debased as a rotting carcass has the potential to hold the viewer captive in a state of awe and admiration.

The Gallery's permanent collection itself is an example of how we strive to preserve objects in their original state, keeping them in a perpetual stasis, away from harmful light, humidity, pests, and other elements. We All Fall Down can be seen as a gasp of air in an otherwise collective holding of our breath. Our personal appearance, a fond memory, a national monument, are all things that evade our pressing urge to keep things as they are, or as we remember them to be. Like the popular children's song, Ring Around the Rosie, the works in this exhibition pay tribute to the moments in life that we often turn away from, and are a sobering reminder that despite our best efforts, things do not always stay the same.

Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery
101 Queen Street North (Located in Centre In The Square)
Kitchener, ON
N2H 6P7 | 519.579.5860 | www.kwag.ca

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Media Contact: Teresa Chiavaroli, Communications Coordinator | 519.579.5860 ext. 222, tchiavaroli@kwag.on.ca

Gallery Hours: Daily: 9:30 a.m. – 5 p.m. Thursdays: 9:30 a.m. – 9 p.m. Saturdays: 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. Sundays: 1:00 – 5:00 p.m.

Admission to the Gallery is always free.