By focusing on the skin of her objects, employing the vinyl veneers of commercial communications, Jazvac has eliminated their knowable form, leaving us to deal with their shiny, seductive, yet rumpled and drooping surfaces. No longer identifiable as attempts at replicating high-end appliances or the vestiges of resort destination hotels (Paper Towel, 2007), now the surface holds all of the artist’s attention, and is laid out like a skin for our evaluation. Draping along walls and propped up against columns, we can consider it as a proposal for a renewed and ongoing examination of a formless form that challenges our perception, and by so doing captures our interest. Like the yuppie-tracking coureurs de bois in the Kids in the Hall sketch, Jazvac has taken surface materials used to coat, to display, and represent, and peeled them back, hoarded them, hollowed them out to create a possibility for new accumulations of intent and meaning.
Artist Bios
Kelly Jazvac
Kelly Jazvac Born in Hamilton, Ontario, Kelly Jazvac received a B.A. from the University of Guelph in 2003 and an M.F.A . from the University of Victoria in 2006. She is based in Toronto, but will be traveling to London, England this fall to participate in a residency at Space, Triangle as part of the Canada Council International Residency Program. Jazvac has participated in exhibitions both nationally and internationally:at I8 Gallery in Reykjavik (2008); Plug In ICA in Winnipeg (2008); the Toronto Sculpture Garden (2007); Diaz Contemporary in Toronto (2007); Open Space in Victoria (2007); ODD Gallery in Dawson City (2006); the Darling Foundry in Montreal (2005);Production Studios in Vancouver (2005); and Millicent Gallery in Los Angeles (2003).
Katie Bethune-Leamen
Katie Bethune-Leamen is a visual artist based in Toronto. Her art practice currently includes working out of her auxiliary workspace, Mushroom Studio, a 20′ tall sculpture of an Amanita pantherina mushroom that houses a working studio space in its stem, commissioned by the Toronto Sculpture Garden. In the fall, Bethune-Leamen will be in Eindhoven, The Netherlands for the second part of a group residency/exchange between YYZ and De Overslag, Eindhoven.
KELLY JAZVAC would like to thank Patrick Howlett and Katie Bethune-Leamen and the Canada Council for the Arts for their support.