Liz Ingram, RCA (in collaboration with Bernd Hildebrandt) – Perplexed Realities 1 (installation view at the Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton), 2008; dye sublimation digital print on polyester fabric; ‘mono’ banner system hardware. Photo: Bernd Hildebrandt.

DETAILS

Beyond Printmaking: Images in Objects - Experimental Printmaking in Western Canada
Triangle Gallery
Thursday, January 7 - Wednesday, January 27

More in: Visual Arts

Calgary is getting good at offering annual festivals for most everything. This year, the Winter Art Stroll is devoted to printmaking and the art of local and western Canadian printmakers. If you want to know the difference between a collagraph, lithograph, serigraph, intaglio print, monotype or linocut, Intergraphia, Calgary’s 6th annual Winter Art Stroll, will bring you face-to-face with hundreds of examples — many of which are award winning and of international repute. Over 15 artist-run centres, studios and public and commercial art galleries have selected programming to coincide with the festival.

The series of exhibitions was organized and envisioned by Triangle Gallery curator and director Jacek Malec, who has quite the history with printmaking in Western Canada — what he calls a very long footnote to the exhibitions. As a teenager, Malec was exposed to the International Biennial of Printmaking, held every two years in Poland since 1966. He remembers being predominantly impressed by a series of prints with crisp, black and abstract lines. The artist was Calgarian John K. Esler and Malec became fascinated with the “exotic” printmakers of Canada, such as Bill Laing and Walter Jule. Talk about following your dreams. Malec came to Canada, became a curator of his venerated artists, and now directs the gallery of which Esler was a founding member.

The corresponding exhibition at the Triangle Gallery, Beyond Printmaking: Images in Objects, highlights the work of eight western Canadian printmakers that use print techniques in experimental ways, often incorporating video, sound and installation as well as painting, sculpture and photography. With a travelling exhibition grant from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the eight artists were able to accompany the exhibition to Poland for the 2009 International Print Triennial. The Canadian exhibition was one of 20 chosen from over 300 proposals submitted worldwide. It took place in a historical Baroque monastery in Poznan and many of the works now on view at the Triangle were created specifically for the spacious and lofty venue.

Alexandra Haeseker’s large-scale digital prints re-create the aura of arched stained glass windows in glowing colours, while depicting contemporary life using the images of toy figures. Recent University of Calgary graduate Jill Ho-You’s delicate etchings of birds form a wall-mounted grid, symbolizing the homogenous treatment of individuals in collectivist societies once they have flown their nests. Marjan Eggermont, a conceptual printmaker, has become more interested in the grooves and textures of relief materials and in the potential of a print than in flat paper works. Similarly, Ewa Tarsia creates multimedia canvases out of paint and the Plexiglas used for monoprinting, exploring the potential of a completely unique print without actually making one.

Other highlights of the Art Stroll include the juried exhibition Contexture: New Directions and Intersections in Printmaking at Untitled Arts Society, featuring works from eight members of the Alberta Printmakers Society; Your face, like a lone nocturnal garden in Worlds where Suns spin round! by Susy Oliveira at The New Gallery, exploring sculptural possibilities of luscious digital prints; and the Art4Five Artist Collective Open Studios on Saturday at 319 10th Ave S.W. For more information and a complete listing of participating venues visit trianglegallery.com.