In Over Our Heads
February 21 - March 21
Sunday Afternoon, Rydel Cerezo, 2019
Franc Gallery is pleased to present In Over Our Heads an exhibition curated by Jocelyne Junker with work from emerging artists Lacie Burning, Rydel Cerezo, Julia Cundari, Jack Kenna, Serisa Fitz-James, Kotryna Buruckaitė, and Marika Vandekraats. All brought together through the expressions of the pressures that both hold down and drive them.
Tension forms individualistically, in the shoulders, in the mind. Curious in the expression of tension considered in syllepsis, allowing the joining of the literal and metaphorical, this relation unfolds in visual and conceptual elements of each artist’s work. Examining the presence of tension in the quotidian, whether it be through an overabundance of responsibilities, scarcity of resources, or cultural despondency, we see how personalized tension embodies the forms in which each individual seeks to express it. Lacie Burning is a Mohawk and Onondaga multi-disciplinary artist born in Brantford and raised on Six Nations of the Grand River reserve. They work in photography, video, installation, and sculpture with a focus on Indigenous Art and Photography. Having come from a politically and culturally grounded upbringing, their work focuses on the politics of Indigeneity and identity from a Haudenosaunee perspective. They are on the 2020 shortlist for the Lind Prize at the Polygon Gallery and have exhibited in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Winnipeg, and Surrey. Rydel Cerezo is a Filipino-born visual artist based in Vancouver, Canada. Cerezo’s work investigates the space between sexuality and religion, race and beauty, and identity and culture. He is interested in how these disparate themes metaphorically and visually coalesce. In the past year, he has exhibited at Aperture Foundation’s Summer Open Exhibition “Delirious Cities” (New York), Vogue Italia’s “Photo Vogue Festival: A Glitch in the System” (Milan), and has recently been shortlisted for the upcoming The Lind Prize 2020 Exhibition. Julia Cundari’s work investigates emotional embodiment, curiosities of deep ecology and plant intelligence, as well as socio-cultural anxieties surrounding trauma and the unknown. This research, expressed through assemblage, paint, poetry and performance, is bound to a slower state of production. Julia plays with the duality between organic and inorganic substances, and asks viewers to contemplate the tensions held in these landscapes built from tenuous infrastructure. Serisa Fitz-James is a filipinx-canadian artist. Through ceramic sculpture, drawing, animation and performance Serisa’s work explores themes of memory, family, place, and identity. Jack Kenna (b. 1994 in Durango, Colorado, USA) works primarily with drawing, painting, and ceramic sculpture. His artworks revolve around objects of subjective, sentimental value and the feedback loops created by working between 2- and 3-D media combined with found images, objects, and text. Jack co-founded Ground Floor Art Centre in 2018, where he works collaboratively toward creating exhibition opportunities for other early emerging artists and young people, and is currently an artist in residence with the Vancouver School Board. Marika Vandekraats (b. 1994) is an artist currently based in her home city of Vancouver. She previously lived in Rotterdam, NL, where she began experimentation into performances and site-specific based work. Her process takes shape through composing works made of malleable matter, considering how the work will act when exposed to time, heat, water, or other agents of transformation. Synchronizing with materials, she considers how these elements are related to human temporalities. By doing this, she also questions the assumed actions and expectations of objects, pushing such expectations until the objects exhaust their own functions and begin to produce something anew. Kotryna Buruckaitė (b. 1992) - is a Lithuanian filmmaker currently based in Amsterdam. In her work she investigates humans in atypical settings. Fascinated by the pleasure of observing others, Kotryna investigates one’s interpersonal relationship with the world. With a touch of fiction and absurdity to it, she questions the worlds given “set of rules’’ and the illogical nature of the man. Her work deviates between enhancing casual anomalies and understanding one’s feelings: a healthy suspicion that things are not the way they’re supposed to be and the inner motivation to act against (to misbehave). Franc Gallery operates on the unceded, ancestral and traditional lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh-ulh Temíx̱w (Squamish) and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ təməxʷ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations of the Coast Salish peoples. Past Exhibitions
Continuing Dialogues
Glenn Lewis, Keith Donovan, Michael Morris & Vincent Trasov September 28th - October 26th, 2019 |