/ARCHIVE — 2012

/jaime angelopoulos — find it, burry it
main space. february 24 — march 30, 2012
Reception at Stride
Opening reception Friday, february 24, 2012, 8pm
Artist Talk: Saturday, February 25 at noon At Stride

Exhibition Info
Artist Bio
Exhibition Text
Writer Bio
IMAGES
Invite pdf

/exhibition information

/With my sculpture practice I explore bodily experience, including sensation, physicality, and, more recently, the emotional/spiritual self. Innate characteristics and functions of the body are considered in contrast to shapeable aspects of human behavior.

However abstract, my sculptures evoke human gestures and forms through their material and scale. Narrative titles such as, You, You’re a Luminous Being, set a conversational tone to invite participation and infuse abstract, ambiguous forms with personal meaning. My drawings often reference my sculptural forms, while also informing the sculpture-making process.

back to top

/Artist Bio

/JAIME ANGELOPOULOS holds an MFA from York University and a BFA from NSCAD University. She also studied sculpture in Texas and Alberta. She has exhibited internationally, and recently presented a solo exhibition at Parisian Laundry in Montreal. Her works are included in several private and corporate collections.

back to top

/Exhibition Text

/AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF FIND IT, BURRY IT
AMY FUNG

INTRODUCTION
We used to sit here for hours with the stereo on, you learning more about me and I learning about you. I sit here still, but I am no longer waiting for you. And I guess, you are no longer waiting for me.

It's warm here on the warm wooden floors. Not at all like the cold grey cement I've become accustomed to. I like the sound of the clicking against the floor boards as toes and heels come by for a visit. Their reverberation goes right through me. They bend down closer towards me. Their faces peering, eyes searching, looking for something. In me. On me. But surfaces can be deceiving. Desiring. I can feel their desire to reach out, to touch with their fingertips the softness about me. But I know they will hold back. They will hold back their touch. Instead, they will click their toes and heels around me, along the wall. Don't forget to breathe, and soon, head back out the door.

BACKGROUND
Do you remember the story of King Midas? He had the golden touch. But he also had a secret. The only person to know his secret was his barber. It was not the barber's fault; it was not his secret to keep. The barber dug a small hole in the earth and whispered the King's secret into it. His chest felt relieved, having buried the weight below him, but the secret was not the earth's to keep either. The reeds that came the following Spring, they knew the secret. And as the wind passed through them, the secret was whispered again and carried on by the wind, so that it was a secret no longer.

Secrets never dissipate. They transform. Morphing into new forms and shapes. Dreams and anxieties. Bodies and movements. Intuition guides, intuition glides, but sensations are only extensions of a form re-forming.

Your secrets are my stories yet told, re-forming and shape-shifting. If oblong could be a texture it would be this texture. Plum draped into a hold, I am not a form; I am forming, for you. From you. Made up of past headlines, fading newspaper stories, crumpled cv's alongside crumpled magazines, words and images bound together inform me, intertwine me. If I had intestines, they would be composed of yellowing paper, drained of smirched ink from the wetness of the plaster. Encased encasings. Stratas suffocating. It's done. And I am learning to breathe without out.

I am the expression of a form re-forming. I am the whispered secret humming inside the ground, manifesting into this new being. Let's begin with an encounter, because you don't seem able to recognize me.

INTERLUDE
Green smells spiny and peach hums vibrancy, cling to the coming white glow. It's warm up here next to you. Not like the chill beneath me against this cold grey floor, pressing against my softness. Violet limbs awkward, strong, I like it best when the lights beam down on me. I am the light you want of me. The shape of colours does not stop. Colours force. Colourforce. Pushing spectrums in an infinite momentum. I am the sound that swallows you in your dreams.

String shag shiny. Plush shines and shines. Words dither here over hums, hmms, and haws. Tilting heads bend with a furrow between growing. Pants rubbing from all the shuffling. A low dull roar of o's and r's and glasses glide over the smooth languid surface. Familiar faces searching for familiarity. Air gets warmer but not any clearer. Stuffy gets stuffier. Swans get swannier. Feather fluff wing down necking crane and still, it's still.

RESOLUTION
You are moved by me, but I am moved by you. First. Remember those moments’ static sensation and distant, small shards of crystal glisten waiting. Find It/Burry It. Affect grows, not cultivates. Sensation becomes with another body, and you can be that second body if I can be the first. My body is not unlike yours. Holding in presence of an awkward posturing. Waiting. Holding and waiting the dew is just starting. Secrets are not secrets. They cannot be contained. Dark boughs break away into a colour stream. Colours carry forward my knowledge to you, where they become with everything buried inside you. Burs burrow prickled lemons shake it out. Shake it out and let's start again.

Written specifically for Jaime Angelopoulos' exhibition, Find It, Burry It, at Stride Gallery Spring 2012. Parts of the text are used with permission from Angelopoulos' private and unpublished writing. 

back to top

/writer bio

/AMY FUNG writes on contemporary art for publications in print and online such as C Magazine, Canadian Art, Frieze, FUSE, etc. She is interested in the practice of arts writing as a creative and critical platform to engage the work through ulterior entry points – amongst other things. For more information visit AmyFung.ca

back to top