July 6 to August 24 2008
Group Exhibition with Karilee Fulgrum,Michel Goulet and Douglas Scholes
Curator: Joyce Millar
Centre culturel de Pointe-Claire, Stewart Hall
Featuring Douglas Scholes versions of
A walk through Maintenance
(This is) what happens when a thing is maintained (?), Part V
For centuries, the defining characteristic of sculpture has been its material and the notion of permanence. Today, however, the traditional bronze, marble and wood have been displaced by a wide variety of materials. It is the state of those materials, the materiality of the substance that has become an interesting point of departure for contemporary sculptors.
The Stewart Hall Art Gallery is pleased to present States of Materiality, an exhibition of works by three Montreal artists, Karilee Fuglem, Michel Goulet and Douglas Scholes. Each explores “states of materiality” creating works that are sometimes soft, sometimes hard, often ephemeral and impermanent, yet always provocative. Recipient of the Governor General’s Award for the Visual and Media Arts in 2008, Michel Goulet brings to his sculpture/installations a refined sense of craftsmanship and an affinity for fabricated industrial materials or objects. Goulet constructs and deconstructs incongruent, disparate items often producing puzzling relationships within each renewed spatial arrangement. His assemblages create a delicate balance between reality, illusion and instability. In sharp contrast. to the stability and strength of Goulet’s sculpture, Karilee Fuglem makes the invisible, visible. Wisps of soft, fine strands of thread become evocative fragile webs or structures that capture light and movement; translucent forms expand and contract like living organisms. Presence and permanence have given way to the immaterial and ephemeral. The built constructions of Douglas Scholes reference the most ancient of materials, brick. Yet on closer examination, these bricks are made of beeswax whose durability and substance inevitably alters with the passage of time. His sculpture/structures undergo a perpetual transformation – a commentary on the nature of the material and the cyclical aspect of both human life and the built environment.
For all three artists, material is paramount to their individual vision of expression. Its physical properties, the materiality, provide the vehicle for exploration and discovery, pushing the boundaries between object and concept, concrete and abstract, material and immaterial. Through the manipulation of materials, Karilee Fuglem, Michel Goulet and Douglas Scholes take the sculptural object beyond one that demands a timeless contemplation to a reflection on decay and renewal, and perhaps propose a catalyst for (ex) change.
Installations by Douglas Scholes include versions of
A walk through Maintenance
(This is) what happens when a thing is maintained (?), Part V
