INFIDELS

THE INFIDELS

International group exhibition curated by Guy Berube
December 3 - 28, 2010

La Petite Mort Gallery : OTTAWA, ON, Canada
December 3 to 28, 2010

Abnormals Gallery: BERLIN, Germany
Feb 5 to 12 March 12, 2011

Abnormals Gallery: POZNAN, Poland
March 26 to April 30, 2011
www.lapetitemortgallery.com

www.abnormalsgallery.com

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Joseph Anderson (Canada), Adam J. Ansell (USA), Aleks Bartosik (Canada), Martin Brouillette (Canada), Matthew Dayler (USA), Andrej Dubravsky (Slovakia), Erik Foss (USA), Greta Grip (Canada), Meaghan Haughian (Canada), Matthias Herrmann (Austria), Ashkan Honarvar (Iran), James Huctwith (Canada), Philippe Jusforgues (France),
Brian Kenny (USA), Scooter LaForge (USA), Andree Leduc (Canada), Zachari Logan (Canada), Jay Barry Matthews (Australia), Slava Mogutin (Russia-USA), Maldo Nollimerg (Switzerland), Juan Carlos Noria (Spain), Peter Shmelzer (Canada), Denis Stepanovic (Austria), Matthew Stradling (UK), Pat Thompson (Canada), Boris Torres (USA), Barnaby Whitfield (USA), Kara Williams (Canada)

We are the Infidels.
At once innocent and ruthless, our bodies are beyond faith.
The seduction of chaos and the chaos of seduction,
Render visible the wounds in the flesh.
- Ryah Stelmanssen, 1862

Brian Kenny

The Latin word infidelis means “one without faith”. Far from its medieval Christian (and Islamic) origins, the word is reborn here with a new vibrancy to embrace aesthetic practices puncturing the sanctuary of the body.

Aleks Bartosik

This group of Canadian and international artists working in various media, are connected by their highly-personal explorations of the estranged body. Emerging artists, self-taught artists, artists struggling with mental health issues, participate alongside formally trained artists to foster the dialectic the body as a site for both contemplation and stigmata.

Marc Nerbonne

The human figure is predominantly featured, presented in ways that serve to obstruct our formulation of an eroticized frame for viewing. Rather, the lush beauty of a brushstroke, the forensic detail of a camera’s surveillance, the evocative trace of the pencil lead to human landscapes which are haunting and disturbing revelations.

Zachari Logan

The images create provocative ambiguous vignettes – ephemeral fragments of time sliced from a presumably largely coherent narrative. As beholders, we are then required to participate by “completing the story”: we imbue to the performing body of the image our own subjective life experiences, creating a “mash up” of meanings conflating the artist’s diaristic expression, and subsequently our own.

The physical body as a contested site for the workings of psychological trauma and veneration links to modern (post-Freudian) practices arguably best known through the harrowing figure studies and portraits by Francis Bacon, the extreme viscerality of photographs by Joel-Peter Witkin, and the confrontational self-lacerating performances by conceptual artists Vito Acconci and Marina Abramovic.

Martin Brouillette

As an intangible metaphor and a tangible presentation of images, INFIDELS represents an exploration of the transgressive body through complex meetings of the physical and the psychical, the real and the imaginary, the artist and the beholder.