The 5th KW|AG Biennial

The Black and the White: An Allegory of Colour

Hyang Cho, FRANKENSTEIN (detail) 2009, 3216 sheets of letter size paper. Image courtesy of the artist.

Ashleigh Bartlett
Hyang Cho
Susan Dobson
Maura Doyle
Brad Emsley
Will Gorlitz
Sarah Kernohan
Shane Krepakevich
Jenn E Norton
Martin Pearce
Ibrahim Rashid

Guest curator: Robert Enright
Presented in cooperation with the
Kitchener-Waterloo Society of Artists (KWSA)

Opening Reception: Fri, June 17 at 7 pm

On View June 15 - September 5, 2011
Curator Talk: Thurs, June 16 at 7 pm
View the invitation here>

Ashleigh Bartlett, Pet rocks, (detail) 2010, oil on canvas, 152.5 x 183 cm. Image courtesy of the artist.

When we use the expression, 'it's black and white,' we speak through a scrim of certainty. We know what we mean; we can easily assign value; we can even remember a time when the words had a moral connotation. But what if the terms are constantly moving, what if their meanings are contingent and provisional, maybe even reversible? What if they are susceptible to all kinds of blur?

The eleven artists who are exhibiting in the 5th KW|AG Biennial recognize the transitory nature of the black and the white. Within what is a limited palette, they have been able to make myriad, and dramatic, meanings. Things are what they seem, and then they are much more. It's in this expansive sense that I am using the term allegory. Allegory is supplement and excess and replacement.  Are porcelain bones about making or disappearing? What do portraits of people who have their eyes closed tell us about them, and about us? Who is looking the hardest; who understands the most? What do dead animals in snow tell us about the world we live in, and the world we are leaving for others to live in? What is a painting that is a photograph that is a drawing? What happens when something never stops being replicated?  What is black and white?

Robert Enright

 

 

 

Jenn E Norton, Les Poupées Russes, 2007, Two-channel Video Installation, 10 min Loop. Images courtesy of the artist and VTape.

The 5th KW|AG Biennial aims to create a critical forum for viewing the contemporary art production taking place in the region Representing the emerging and the established, The Black and the White: An Allegory of Colour offers a focused look at what is happening in the region's studios through the eyes of guest curator, Robert Enright.  A Winnipeg-based art critic and independent curator, Enright is the senior contributing editor and film critic for Border Crossings magazine, and the University Research Professor in Art Theory and Criticism in the School of Fine Art and Music at the University of Guelph, where he teaches in the Graduate Program. He has contributed essays, introductions and interviews to 60 books and catalogues, and has published over 200 interviews with contemporary artists in the pages of Border Crossings.  The Black and the White: An Allegory of Colour will be accompanied by an online catalogue featuring an essay by Robert Enright. The catalogue will be available free of charge here at www.kwag.ca

 

• 5^th KW|AG Biennial Artist podcasts: Artists speak about their work:
  
  Ashleigh Bartlett
  Hyang Cho
  Susan Dobson
  Maura Doyle
  Brad Emsley
  Will Gorlitz
  Sarah Kernohan
  Shane Krepakevich
  Jenn E. Norton
  Martin Pearce

• Artist Statements click here >