GALLERY 881
881 East Hastings Street
Vancouver, BC
Canada V6A 3Y1
gallery881.com
@gallery881_
Tangential Matter Exhibition
Group Exhibition with artists Chris Jordan, Danielle Bobier, Gerri York, Jennifer Lim, Paula Nishikawara. Curated by John Goldsmith.
Gallery 881 Centre Room
Exhibition
May 21, 2024 - June 18, 2024
Opening Reception
May 25, 2024 from 12 - 5 pm
EXHIBITION STATEMENT
"Tangential Matter” is an exploration of the interconnectedness between the tangible and intangible, the material and the ethereal. The group exhibition unites five artists from distinct disciplines—photography, printmaking, painting, ceramics, and sculpture. The exhibition draws inspiration from the five ancient elements including air (ἀήρ aḗr), fire (πῦρ pŷr), water (ὕδωρ hýdōr), earth (γῆ gê), and the aether (αἰθήρ).
Tangential Matter echoes from a space of protoscience with the philosophical gesturing predating modern science. With photography as a basis, tangential mediums are presented as an experiment in resonance and interference. Through the spectrum of depictions of geothermal forces and atmospheric currents, we see and experience our world as it is governed by the “shape” of the localized forces that act on the energy and matter of our material plane.
Tangential Matter takes place in the Gallery 881 Centre Room located at 881 East Hastings Street, Vancouver. The entropic works on display explore this human-nature dualism in the context of beauty and destruction, organic and inorganic, life and death. The exhibition also incorporates design elements through our collaboration with Retro Modern Designs. The Noguchi table, with its organic and physics-defying shape, unites the exhibition like the universe's interstitial glue aka dark matter.
ARTIST BIOs
Chris Jordan
For two decades Chris Jordan’s internationally known photographs and conceptual artworks have probed into the dark underbelly of our culture of mass consumption. Exploring the complexities of our many forms of waste, these series have been exhibited and published worldwide, most recently with a retrospective solo exhibit at the Sungkok Art Museum in Seoul. Chris has published four books and is past winner of the Sierra Club’s Ansel Adams Prize for Conservation Photography (2010), the Prix Pictet Commission Prize in Paris (2011), and the GreenLeaf Award given by the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo (2007). His paradigm-breaking film Albatross reached a global audience with its compelling love story about birds on a remote island in the Pacific whose bodies are filled with plastic. Albatross was recipient of the 2018 Planetary Health Film Prize in London.
Chris currently lives in a small town in Patagonia, Chile on the Strait of Magellan at the tip of South America. In this space of relative isolation, his work turned in a new direction: toward the contemplation of beauty as a response to the mental chaos of our times. He has recently released several new photographic projects, all under the title “Beauty Emerging.”
Danielle Bobier
Danielle Bobier is a Vancouver-based visual artist whose practice finds interest in elements of material, abstraction, geometry, and the natural world. Working primarily as a painter, her compositions consider the act of horizon-gazing, observing the inner landscape through a symbolic lens. She has shown in numerous exhibitions, most recently at spaces such as Trapp Projects, the lobby space at the Contemporary Art Gallery, and Art Rental & Sales, Operated by the Vancouver Art Gallery. She holds a BFA in Visual Arts from Emily Carr University of Art + Design (2016), and a diploma in Fine Art from Langara College (2014). She is the recipient of two BC Arts Council grants, the Langara College Painting Studio Award, and residencies at Malaspina Printmakers and Makerlabs. Her work can be found in collections across Canada and in the US.
Gerri York
Gerri York is a visual art graduate of the BFA programme at Emily Carr University. She was born in London, England and completed a B.Ed.(Hons) degree at St Gabriel’s College, London University, England. Her visual art practice encompasses sculpture, printmaking, photography and drawing and has been exhibited in a wide variety of exhibitions and juried shows. The work is included in both public and private collections, in Canada and internationally, and an artist’s residency was completed at Grafisch Atelier Utrecht (CBKU) in the Netherlands.
York has sat on the education committee of the Vancouver Art Gallery and completed an internship. During 2003–2006 she worked at the VAG as a staff animateur and workshop leader in public programmes. At the Contemporary Art Gallery she has volunteered on the Education Committee and facilitated workshops for art teachers. Gerri is a member and past Board member of Malaspina Printmakers,’ has worked on their fundraising, education and studio committees and written articles for the print media journal, CHOP.
Currently York is working at the Howe Street studios in Vancouver situated on the unceded, indigenous homeland of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-waututh Nations.
Jennifer Lim
Form is prioritized over function in Jennifer Lim’s slow, hand-built ceramics. With a focus on surface noise and disruption, her work conveys a sense of porousness and malleability. A deep love for nature leads her to highlight the inherent qualities and materiality of clay, while working towards a practice that is minimally extractive, and honors the multiform ways in which this earth nourishes us. As an immigrant settler, Jen is keenly aware that extractive processes in procuring ceramic and glaze materials sometimes cause great harm to local and Indigenous communities and lands worldwide. Her practice is an ongoing engagement with this tension—exploring her positionality and responsibility, through art, in supporting repair and resilience.
Of Chinese descent and born in Manila, Jen immigrated to Toronto in her early teens. She obtained a dual BA in Visual Arts and Anthropology from the University of Toronto, with a concentration on printmaking and site-specific installation. She focused on street and travel photography, then food and beverage photography while living in New York City for 15 years. She also worked as a photo researcher and photo librarian while obtaining her masters in Library and Information Science (with a concentration on archival studies). Jen pivoted to ceramics in 2018, and established a practice after moving to Vancouver in 2020. Her work has been included in curated group shows in the U.S. and Vancouver.
Paula Nishikawara
Nishikawara’s artistic DNA is authentically rooted in the landscapes and experiences of the Canadian Pacific Northwest. Her colour and composition finds its source in the beauty of rainforests, mountain glaciers, seascapes, vast skies, and fast flowing rivers. Paula is an international artist creating humanistic and environmentally focused works using painting, printmaking, installation, photography, sculpture and performance.
Her ancestral connection with Japan plays an important role in Nishikawara’s creative universe. It is expressed in her extensive use of reinvented traditional Japanese printing techniques, use of Japanese papers, and above all a fluent and articulated way of merging traditional and modern discourses of art making. Although her works stand alone, the immersive installations where multiple and broad elements intertwine to create alternate dimensions - are her most favourite constructs that invite reconsideration, and often self-inquiry.
SPONSORS of GALLERY 881
PrintMaker Studio is a Canson Infinity Certified Print Lab and custom finisher and framer. We are located at 881 East Hastings, Vancouver. printmaker-studio.com
Retro Modern Designs furnishes Gallery 881. Please contact the gallerist for acquisitions of art and design. Retro Modern Designs is located at 727 E Hastings, Vancouver. retromodernhome.com