SUSAN KORDALEWSKI / EXHIBITION AND ARTIST TALK / THIS WILL ALSO CHANGE

Susan Kordalewski
20.03 — 20.04 / 2012

Opening reception : Tuesday, November 6, 2012

17h

Taken from a Buddhist story in which two brothers inherit rings, one inscribed with the phrase “This will also change”, this exhibition includes eight works, including six that have never before been exhibited. Driven by questions of ontology, Susan Kordalewski mines her personal history to create works of art that document the personal in a way that emphasizes the ephemeral nature of the subject. This Will Also Change features photographs, prints, sculpture, installation, and craft-based artwork dealing with the emotionality and temporality of relationships, memory, and events.

Driven by a desire to contain, categorize, and represent the emotional, Kordalewski engages in a pseudo-scientific archival process that emphasizes the ephemeral and momentary, representing an obsessive need to arrive at some empirical, fixed truth. Kordalewski moves past the questions, “What, how, where and why does it mean?” to explore what we feel compelled to do with meaning, at the most intimate and personal level.

At Sporobole, the viewer is invited to experience a series of enigmatic propositions expressed in a wide range of media. The artworks in the exhibition take several forms: My Cells Are Rearranging Themselves is a photographic diptych that uses a mundane household moving box in a metaphor for change; The Sentence Project features a chronology of aphorisms, acting as a self-portrait highlighting the impermanence of self and experience; Rumination is an audio installation of five voices, each reading an encyclopaedia article that attempts to explain an emotional condition from a psychological or biological perspective; and My Misery Is A Gift is an edition of greeting cards featuring tearful photographic portraits.

The viewer is left with the residue of a deeply personal struggle―Kordalewski’s critical, diary-like work creates structures for understanding, attempting to materialize the ephemeral, to give structure to the intangible.

Crédit photo : Jocelyn Riendeau