Dominique Rey, Jon Sasaki and Lancelot Coar at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery

Dominique Rey Erlking
January 14 to March 4, 2012

In the dark forests of Scandinavia and Germany lurks the mysterious Erlking, a seductive, yet sinister creature that lures foolish travelers to their death. Folklore claims her as a lustful female spirit, hungry for revenge, while Goethe famously portrays him as a malevolent force of evil preying on children. For Dominique Rey, the Erlking resides deep within us all, a manifestation of the self that many have sensed whispering within our psyche, a siren call that few have dared to answer.

Rey's Erlking series captures her desire to dive into the unconscious where the self and the internal 'other' coexist. This photographic series presents Rey taking on a host of personas from the masked temptress drawing you in, to the wild-eyed, bearded man seemingly stuck in an eternal performance of pratfalls. Absurd, grotesque, titillating and beguiling, Rey's expressions of selfhood offer a compelling strategy for celebrating alterity and serve as a metaphor of the vast continuum of potentialities contained within each of us.

Erlking is organized by the Southern Alberta Art Gallery and curated by Ryan Doherty. Funding assistance from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and the City of Lethbridge. A publication is in production with Gallery 1C03 at the University of Winnipeg featuring essays and images from Erlking and Pilgrims.


Jon Sasaki Good Intentions
January 14 to March 4, 2012

Jon Sasaki's work emulates the perseverance of spirit of a blues drifter. Acceptance—rather than transcendence—of one's current situation, and the will to persist, are the markers of Jon's personae and cast of characters. Sasaki, a self-described romantic-conceptualist, creates scenarios that are rife with opportunity for failure. A deep-rooted insistence on finding the bright side becomes a courageous (or foolhardy) act of revolution. The promise of a better day is just around the corner. Sasaki's presentation of reality elicits empathy, and our hearts may be torn between the charm of the naïve player and our own ability to recognize a situation that is destined to be pathetic. The awareness of this tension enables us to find beauty, and opens us up to a sweetened sense of our human condition.

Good Intentions is organized by the Doris McCarthy Gallery in partnership with the Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Kenderdine Art Gallery, Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, MacLaren Art Centre, Dunlop Art Gallery and Prairie Art Gallery.


Lancelot Coar Swarm
January 14 to March 4, 2012

Within all materials and structures lie the secret lives of dynamic and flowing forces that leap, spring, and bind the materials they are contained by. These invisible flows are usually only revealed when the rectilinear structures we build crack, bend, or collapse, releasing these powerful and vital invisible energies. Architect Frei Otto famously proposed that all structures in the natural world are formed by "pressures" both physical and cultural. In Swarm the creative pressures that are contained in, and flow through, the Southern Alberta Art Gallery are captured and contained in a fabric and rope tensile structure that extends and reaches to the park on the north face of the gallery. At night, the colored light that project from various points within the gallery walls, create shifting shadows of gallery visitors to the park beyond.

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More information at www.saag.ca

Southern Alberta Art Gallery (SAAG) is located at 601 3 Avenue South, Lethbridge Alberta. We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and the City of Lethbridge.

Contact: Christina Cuthbertson
Communications Manager/Assistant Curator
Southern Alberta Art Gallery
T: 403 327 8770 ext 24
Email: ccuthbertson@saag.ca