In Obsolescence / Invention, their latest exhibition at Saint Mary's University Art Gallery, artists Robert Bean and Ilan Sandlar explore the traces that materials, life forms, ideas, and cultural trends have left behind on our planet. The fact that neither Bean nor Sandler include didactic panels with their work increases our sense that these items are either no longer of our world or so innocuous we fail to recognize them. In looking at these traces of the past and present, we feel like travellers to a strange land, left with the daunting task of interpreting these fragments on our own.
Robert Bean, Equation, 2011
Bean explores systems of communication, presenting archival inkjet prints of photographs of obsolete machines used for writing and communication. He depicts obsolete technology ranging from a steno writer (a machine first popularized in the 1900s and used to take notes in shorthand) to a SAGE computer console (part of a Cold-War era computerized network that first allowed the US government to control aircraft at ground level). In viewing these prints, viewers can't help but consider that the loss of each technology, many of which seem particularly foreign to us now, also coincides with the loss of technology-specific language and the social infrastructure needed to support that technology.
Sandler presents ancient microscopic organisms, printing life-sized images of diatoms captured using an electron-scanning microscope onto glass panes. By increasing the size of these tiny life forms, he challenges our current perception of our place in the universe: these simple organisms, who've been around since the time of the dinosaurs – more than 100 million years according to fossil records – could have had more of an impact on the planet than us. He also enlarges imagery of organic matter in The Left Index, a steel "self portrait" depicting the artist's left index fingerprint. Since governments and an increasing number of private enterprises use our fingerprints as proof of our identity, this work reinforces the weight of the biometric data in our systems of access today. Standing seven-feet tall the sculpture reminds us that the traces we leave behind can reveal more about us than we can ourselves.
St. Mary's University Art Gallery: http://www.smu.ca/campus-life/art-exhibitions.html
Obsolescence / Invention continues until December 1.
Lizzy Hill is an internationally published writer and the editor of Visual Arts News, Atlantic Canada's only magazine focusing on the work of visual artists. Lizzy loves her community in Halifax's artistic north end, a wonderful summer camp for grown ups full of underground restaurants and pop-up galleries. She is Akimblog's Halifax correspondent and can be followed @LizzyFHill on Twitter.
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Obsolescence/Invention at Saint Mary's University Art Gallery
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