The Southern Alberta Art Gallery opens two new exhibits today at 8 p.m. — Numbers in the Dark and Zin Taylor's The Story of Stripes and Dots (Chapter 6).
NUmbers in the Dark is a group exhibition featuring the works of Cory Arcangel, Paul Chan, Yona Friedman, Stephen Kelly, Jennifer Marman & Daniel Borins, Jorge Mendez Blake, Marco De Mutiis, Pipilotti Rist, Yes Men and Rosario Zorraquín.
Their works examine the concept of defunct, arbitrary, obsolete, erroneous, corrupt or marginalized data information and the process of how it is being appropriated and recontextualized in contemporary art while offering new meaning and perspectives on the world today.
Discussions on our Information Age are framed by opposing characterizations as an apocalyptic era, calling us to oppose the fatigue that infinite quantities of data can only provoke, or as a democratic epoch in which we can enjoy instant access to knowledge that would have been difficult or impossible to find previously. We are torn between these two poles.
Numbers in the Dark however was conceived as a territory of inquiry, overturning binary oppositions and exposing the largely unacknowledged role that uncertainty, excess and ambiguity play in shaping today’s social relations. International in its scope, the exhibition brings together a broad range of artists who glean information through unconventional means and in doing so, aim to disrupt the implicit trust in which we subsume data.
This exhibition is organized by the Southern Alberta Art Gallery. Funding assistance from the Canada Council for the Arts, Alberta Foundation for the Arts and the City of Lethbridge.
Brussels based, Calgary born artist Zin Taylor opens the second new exhibit at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Dec. 7 as well.
“ The Story of Stripes and Dots (Chapter 6) addresses form as a philosophical quandary. Stripes and dots, two hallmarks of abstraction, are used within this series to develop a surface-language with which to read the forms they are applied to. A stripe seen from head-on is a dot, a dot seen from the side could very well be a stripe.
Dots are points in a conversation — the tangential narrative of said conversation is represented with a stripe. With a focus on the form of thought rather than its content, Taylor probes at those foundational assumptions inherent to object making. How does an idea transform from being abstract and inculpable to something concrete and tangible? What is the shape of a thought? What is its texture? How does it exist? For Taylor, this enigmatic divide between concept and material is a fertile and malleable space to occupy.
Funding assistance from the RBC Foundation, Canada Council for the Arts, Alberta Foundation for the Arts and the City of Lethbridge.
Both exhibits run until Feb. 2
The opening reception is at 8 p.m..
The Trianon also opens a new group exhibit tonight. Bloodless & Boneless runs Dec. 7 to Feb. 7, 2014 featuring work by Joseph Anderson, Mary-Anne McTrowe, Shanell Papp and Lissa Robinson.
