Dual Phenomenology
From Sept. 23 to 27, Zavitz Gallery showcased the work of two promising young artists from the University of Guelph’s School of Fine Arts. Susannah Van Der Zaag and Mariah Hamilton collaborated in an exhibition called Dual Phenomenology, exploring the mediums of sculpture, photography, and painting to create non-traditional works that captured the essence of duality and phenomenology.
Each piece of artwork presented the notion of duality and the content of the works showed two mediums playing off one another through banter between objects and photographs. Phenomenology existed in the exhibition through the approach that concentrated on the study of consciousness and objects of direct experience.
The show demonstrated the intention of both artists where they both strived to combine sculptural elements in photo-based work and explore the potential for overlap between mediums, thus creating something non-traditional and unexpected. In addition to the brilliant concept of the exhibition, the artists created an atmosphere in the gallery that made the show inclusive, so when someone walked in the gallery, they could enjoy the work based on aesthetic without having any previous knowledge of the show.
When you entered the gallery, the back wall presented you with two works by Van Der Zaag and Hamilton. The two paintings on the right, produced by Hamilton, were made in relationship to one another through the idea of hole vs. mound, which represented the notions of being out of place. On the left side of the wall, Van Der Zaag presented us with two still life photographs of objects completely covered with glitter. This might be the artist’s way of poking fun at the serious nature of the traditional painted still life. Van Der Zag reconstructed the still life image through the comedic use of one of the least respected materials in the arts.
The left side of the gallery consisted of art works by Van Der Zaag where there was a series of six-by-six inch photographs in abstracted colours, titled “Top photos of the day.” These were five images that were part of a process-based piece in which the artist took extreme close-up photographs of the top photos of the day on Instagram. She then reposted the images to Instagram with identical caption as the original. On another portion of the wall, the artist produced sculptures with photographic materials. She allowed long paper roles, used to photograph portraiture or still lives, to hang along the wall onto the ground. This allowed for materials to exist outside an image and become sculptural objects.
On the opposite end of the gallery, Hamilton occupied the wall with a series of photographs of arbitrary objects. “I was often looking at objects within my house, and then really wanting to push the humor in still life work at the time,” said Hamilton. “I was striving to create relationships, between objects that could wrestle inside and outside the frame and emphasize the qualities of the objects in a photograph.”
“I think that in my own work, as well as in Mariah Hamilton’s work, we often create realities that are what we wish our own realities were like,” said Van Der Zaag. “These realities are produced through reconstructing and staging objects or people to make something whimsical and often humorous.”
The show was successful in providing the audience with a different perception towards traditional still life art across all mediums. The artists plan to continue to explore the potential of photographic materials becoming something other than a representational image.