Walter Jule, Toward an Impure Thought: an unlikely meeting of in and out, here and there, 2002, etching and lithograph, part of the exhibition 'Skin'

Edmonton print artist Walter Jule has played a key role in the development of printmaking in Alberta. A professor emeritus at the University of Alberta, Jule — along with Lyndal Osborne — pioneered the internationally recognized print department at the U of A in the 1970s. They created an environment that encouraged students to merge processes, so that freedom in technical, conceptual and esthetic developments could flourish. Over the past 30 years, Jule has combined a variety of printmaking processes and complex images that oscillate between abstraction and representation. Much of his work incorporates digitally manipulated images of mundane objects applying strain on ambiguous flesh-like surfaces. His allusions to flesh being pulled and punctured act as a metaphor for the corporeal experience and human existence.

Curated by Derek Besant, the retrospective exhibition “Skin” highlights the bemusing strain that occurs when viewing Jule's work. While some works illustrate this tension directly with skin-like textures being pulled taut, others place the strain on the viewer. When looking at the work, there is a juxtaposition between the pressure to understand what seems familiar and the excitement of constant uncertainty. Some prints are a combination of photographic images of interior and environmental spaces that fade into wrinkled textures that allude to flesh. In these images, it is difficult to differentiate where space ends and the body begins.

Aptly situated just to the right of the exhibition’s entrance, the work Skin, a large black-and-white lithograph printed on Plexiglas, directs the viewer into the gallery. The print depicts a photographic image of the skin on the back of a right hand, presumably Jule's, being pulled tightly towards a black wooden circle embedded in the lower left edge of the Plexiglas. The angle of the stretched skin points the viewer towards a projected black-and-white video of the back of the left hand on the opposing wall.

The back of the left hand in the video is covered in small black dots, similar to the wooden black circle in the Plexiglas. The hand moves, gyrating, clenching and relaxing — obscuring the part of the body being represented. At times, the tendons and bones under the stretched skin appear to be a nude back and spine, which then evolve into an extended elbow. Visual certainty is obliterated by the continuous shifts between smooth contours of bones and coarse, dark wrinkles.

To the right of the video are four lithographs that depict imagery and themes that reoccur throughout the exhibition. Each print has a pale peach background, possibly a digital image of paper or fabric. The edges of the background are wrinkled while the centres are stretched in three directions. Various ovoid shapes, pebbles, marks or holes rest at the three corners of the triangle, pulling and pushing the wrinkled surface so that it is flat and smooth. In the work Towards an Impure Thought: An Unlikely Meeting of In and Out, Here and There, 15 grey, digitally manipulated photographs of ovular shapes are situated around the stretched triangle. Shadows and skewed shapes in the objects are suggestive of breasts, nipples or inflated condoms, hinting at impure thoughts.

In more recent but similar works in the exhibition, Jule photographs objects over extended periods of time and chooses the image that best captures a sagging and deflated quality, one that may suggest gestures of the body. Untitled from the Revisions of Forward Series consists of four lithograph prints, each containing a photographic image of deflated balloons or jugs filled with opaque liquid, and an arrangement of wooden pegs that alludes to scientific diagrams.

These prints reference scientific images of internal organs or metaphors for exhaustion. Printmaking uses high pressure to bring ink in contact with paper. It is not an immediate process, and some methods, like woodblock and etching, are more labour intensive than others. Jule's prints illustrate these ideas of pressure and labour in relation to the human body, which is constantly being pulled and punctured by everyday circumstance.