Monica Tap: séance

January 12 - March 25, 2007
Organized by KW|AG

Public Opening: Friday, January 12, 2007, 7 - 9 p.m.

Artist Talk: Thursday Mar. 22, 2007. 7 - 9 p.m.

"…by referencing more than just one video still on a single canvas, I attempt to have a painting in which the image is held in flux: a moving image made still and but not still. A hybrid of resolution and not, of here and not here. Suspended…" -Monica Tap 

Tap's recent work has focused on the convergence of the conceptual and the pictorial within perceived space, with a particular emphasis on the painterly qualities of ubiquitous digital technologies (such as camera phones). The works featured in séance act as a metaphor for things unseen and an experience of malleable time. KW|AG is thrilled to premiere these works in the context of our River Grand Chronicles series.

Monica Tap, The Road to Lily Dale I, 2006, oil on canvas, 203 x 251 cm. Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, gift of the Artist, 2008. Image courtesy of the artist.

One could say that the works in séance have their origins in Tap's experience of particular landscapes at vastly different speeds. The smaller works document Homer Watson Boulevard from the safe distance of a passenger window. Two of the large canvases are based on multiple stills of footage shot by Tap from the vantage of a canoe drifting along the bank of the Grand River, whereas the other two are derived from footage shot en route to Lily Dale, New York - the oldest existing spiritualist community in North America, and a place Homer Watson visited later in his life. The works in séance do not indulge us with the depiction of pastoral landscapes reminiscent of Watson's well known landscape paintings, rather, they present us with what could be considered a pictorial equivalent of travel at different speeds: an absence of horizon in a space with no real ground.

séance is complemented by an online exhibition catalogue featuring an essay by Matthew Brower, Assistant Professor of Art History at York University.

About Monica Tap
Toronto-based painter Monica Tap has exhibited in Canada; London, England; and New York. She is the recipient of many grants and awards, most recently from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for her project, "Translation as a Strategy of Renewal in Painting." Tap's work is represented in private, corporate and public collections in Canada and the U.S. Originally from Alberta, Monica Tap completed both her BFA (1990) and MFA (1996) degrees at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Tap's work is represented by Wynick/Tuck Gallery in Toronto.