C.WELLS: PLACE and SPACE (REDUX)
UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO ART GALLERY
JANUARY 9 - MARCH 8, 2014
CURATED BY IVAN JURAKIC
Selected from the 270 Sherman exhibition, the UWAG presentation will focus on recent works within the Line Marker Project. Sculptures, paintings and wall works from THE FOLK SERIES and THE CENSURE SERIES are featured.
For more information, please contact:
UWAG
http://uwag.uwaterloo.ca/
C.WELLS: PLACE and SPACE an exhibition for 270sherman
"To be different from our everyday lives, yet to make a
difference in them, works of art need to be at once approachable and
strange. We require a connection — otherwise, we literally won't see — but there
is little point in going exactly where we have been before. For progressive
contemporary painters, the familiarity of the medium is a virtue that must also
be challenged." (Mark Cheetham, Painting, Over the Lines: The
Social Abstraction of C. Wells)
Since 1996, C.Wells has developed a painting practice akin in spirit to that of a contemporary topographer, exclusively using line marker paint - the industrial material used to mark the borders and boundaries of highways and roads which regulate vehicular or pedestrian movement and its accompanying schematics. Replicating the language of the lines and/or using the paint material to create narrative ideas; C.Wells also investigates the history/heritage of line marking, beginning with its origins in Trenton, Michigan in 1911. His research is analogous to a sociolgical pursuit into a communication means equally as it is read as art, as abstraction or as new treatises of landscape painting.
Created work, asks the viewer to consider all means of symbolic communication in our everyday world - things seen but not often observed - and their correlated beauty or lack thereof.
Commemorating its centennial as an inventon in 2011; the line marker is a global device, visually impactful, as it was phenomenological a century ago. Often used in popular culture to signal journey's ahead and made; it is an allegorical crest of urbanization to anyone who has experienced mobility in a car or otherwise. Exploring how the line marker is utilized today as a civic gesture to its metaphoric properties; Wells’ final emphasis is found in the line marker’s imageability as an emblematic code.
Opening May 4th, 2013, in conjunction with the architectural heritage program 'Doors Open'; C.Wells transforms a 30,000 square foot industrial mill floor into an exhibition titled PLACE and SPACE. Connecting the line marker as an industrial-age transportation and communication device to an environment designed and maintained as a heritage site; PLACE and SPACE comprises some 50 works; continuing Wells' ongoing interest in the line marker's visual and narrative power to connote the colloquial, notions of urban planning, architectural theories of space and popular culture.
A selection of the artist's work from 1996 to newly created paintings, sculptures, text works and video/photo-based works present ‘place’: as a particular setting of nuances both static and transitory; as a geographic, definitive or indefinite boundary, as a phenomenon in which people strongly identify with a particular area or location and as a cultural paradigm tied to oral, pictorial or written narratives. Thoughts of ‘space’ parallel within the works as: a perception considerate of surroundings; as a factor impacting human and cultural behavior; as a measured quantitative and qualitative entity and as a general framework for visual experience.
C.WELLS: PLACE and SPACE
May 4th - June 23rd, 2013
3rd Floor, Mill Gallery Space
270 Sherman Avenue North, Hamilton, ON, Canada
EXHIBITION NOW CLOSED FOR VIEWING
For more information visit: www.270sherman.com
C. Wells is a Hamilton-based artist. Selected exhibitions include: Topographies, UNION Gallery, Kingston, WHITE ROMA / WHITE PELEE, Art Gallery of Hamilton,
Future Cities, Art Gallery of Hamilton, RoadWorks Performance Festival, Mercer Union, Toronto, 1911, McMaster Museum of Art, Hamilton, Mitchell: Southwest Triennial, Museum London, 1998 Alberta Biennial of Contemporary Art, Glenbow Museum / Edmonton Art Gallery, A to B: Post-Aesthetic Painting, The New Gallery, Calgary. He is the recipient of various grant awards including the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.
For more information visit: www.cwells.com
Image: SURVEY(or), 2012, performance still
difference in them, works of art need to be at once approachable and
strange. We require a connection — otherwise, we literally won't see — but there
is little point in going exactly where we have been before. For progressive
contemporary painters, the familiarity of the medium is a virtue that must also
be challenged." (Mark Cheetham, Painting, Over the Lines: The
Social Abstraction of C. Wells)
Since 1996, C.Wells has developed a painting practice akin in spirit to that of a contemporary topographer, exclusively using line marker paint - the industrial material used to mark the borders and boundaries of highways and roads which regulate vehicular or pedestrian movement and its accompanying schematics. Replicating the language of the lines and/or using the paint material to create narrative ideas; C.Wells also investigates the history/heritage of line marking, beginning with its origins in Trenton, Michigan in 1911. His research is analogous to a sociolgical pursuit into a communication means equally as it is read as art, as abstraction or as new treatises of landscape painting.
Created work, asks the viewer to consider all means of symbolic communication in our everyday world - things seen but not often observed - and their correlated beauty or lack thereof.
Commemorating its centennial as an inventon in 2011; the line marker is a global device, visually impactful, as it was phenomenological a century ago. Often used in popular culture to signal journey's ahead and made; it is an allegorical crest of urbanization to anyone who has experienced mobility in a car or otherwise. Exploring how the line marker is utilized today as a civic gesture to its metaphoric properties; Wells’ final emphasis is found in the line marker’s imageability as an emblematic code.
Opening May 4th, 2013, in conjunction with the architectural heritage program 'Doors Open'; C.Wells transforms a 30,000 square foot industrial mill floor into an exhibition titled PLACE and SPACE. Connecting the line marker as an industrial-age transportation and communication device to an environment designed and maintained as a heritage site; PLACE and SPACE comprises some 50 works; continuing Wells' ongoing interest in the line marker's visual and narrative power to connote the colloquial, notions of urban planning, architectural theories of space and popular culture.
A selection of the artist's work from 1996 to newly created paintings, sculptures, text works and video/photo-based works present ‘place’: as a particular setting of nuances both static and transitory; as a geographic, definitive or indefinite boundary, as a phenomenon in which people strongly identify with a particular area or location and as a cultural paradigm tied to oral, pictorial or written narratives. Thoughts of ‘space’ parallel within the works as: a perception considerate of surroundings; as a factor impacting human and cultural behavior; as a measured quantitative and qualitative entity and as a general framework for visual experience.
C.WELLS: PLACE and SPACE
May 4th - June 23rd, 2013
3rd Floor, Mill Gallery Space
270 Sherman Avenue North, Hamilton, ON, Canada
EXHIBITION NOW CLOSED FOR VIEWING
For more information visit: www.270sherman.com
C. Wells is a Hamilton-based artist. Selected exhibitions include: Topographies, UNION Gallery, Kingston, WHITE ROMA / WHITE PELEE, Art Gallery of Hamilton,
Future Cities, Art Gallery of Hamilton, RoadWorks Performance Festival, Mercer Union, Toronto, 1911, McMaster Museum of Art, Hamilton, Mitchell: Southwest Triennial, Museum London, 1998 Alberta Biennial of Contemporary Art, Glenbow Museum / Edmonton Art Gallery, A to B: Post-Aesthetic Painting, The New Gallery, Calgary. He is the recipient of various grant awards including the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.
For more information visit: www.cwells.com
Image: SURVEY(or), 2012, performance still