The Limits: Tracing Time and Seeing Space

September 16, 2011 - January 8, 2012

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.

Kristan Horton
Spring Hurlbut
Lani Maestro
Jani Ruscica
Alyson Shotz
David Spriggs
Kerry Tribe

Curated by Crystal Mowry

Opening Reception:  Friday September 23
Artist Talk with David Spriggs, 7 pm
Opening remarks, 8 pm
View the evite here >
Curator's Talk: Thurs, Nov 10, 7 PM
Curator Tour, in concert with CAFKA: Sept 17, 5 pm

The Limits presents ideas about time and space, as seen through the eyes of seven leading Canadian and international contemporary artists. A limit, in its most rudimentary definition, is understood to be a boundary or constraint. This exhibition explores how art can help us understand time and space in new ways, by borrowing the artists' perceptions. Like a story of perceptual dissonance told through the familiar game of "broken telephone," each work in this exhibition seems to whisper its perception of time to the next,
with errors and intentional inconsistencies accumulating
along the way.

Kristan Horton, Drawing Of The History Of The First World War, 2008, graphite on paper, 92 x 92 cm. Courtesy the artist and Jessica Bradley Art & Projects, Toronto.

The Limits features a diverse mix of artistic disciplines, including drawing, sculpture, video and photography. Spring Hurlbut's photographic portraits of cremated human and animal remains suggest both an inevitable mortal limit and the seemingly unquantifiable nature of the cosmos. Kristan Horton's intricate, spiralled drawings evoke the echo of history and the selectivity that comes with interpretation and the passage of time. Kerry Tribe's multi-component installation replicates the unreliability of memory through multiple, slightly different, accounts of a single event. Jani Ruscica's video and photography tell a communal story of the evolution of the universe through the perspectives of seven Finnish youth. Like the equivalent of a visual echo, the sculptures of David Spriggs unsettle the mechanics of vision by simultaneously suggesting both the instantaneous and the static. A massive wall drawing by Alyson Shotz, made with thread, acts as a translation of a digital, hypothetical version of space. Standing stoically in the corridor entrance to the exhibition, Lani Maestro's a book thick of ocean, depicts a vast ocean, and serves as a visual palindrome that is equally effective seen forwards or backwards. Maestro's work anchors the gallery as a space that seems to resist the passing of time altogether.

The Limits will be complemented by a forthcoming catalogue featuring a curatorial essay and a text on the subject of time. Visit KW|AG's website (www.kwag.ca) to learn more about new public programming events scheduled in concert with this exhibition.

On Friday, September 9 through to Monday, September 12 KW|AG offers the public a chance to go behind-the-scenes during the installation of Alyson Shotz' Folded Space Drawing #3. The work is part of The Limits.  Visit the Gallery during regular hours to watch this creation come to life.