Lisa Klapstock
 

THRESHOLD
A solo exhibit of work by Lisa Klapstock

August 16 - November 17, 2003
Center for Photography at Woodstock, New York


Lisa Klapstock is a Toronto-based artist who has exhibited in Canada, the U.S., and Europe at commercial, non-profit, and public galleries as well as in alternative venues. In the summer of 2002, Klapstock was an artist-in-residence at Stichting Duende in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. She is a founding member of the all-woman international artist collective Fresh Air, and is represented in Canada by Diane Farris Gallery, Vancouver. Upcoming exhibitions include solo shows in the Odense Foto Triennial, Denmark, and at Centre Vu in Quebec City; and group shows at Vancouver’s Presentation House Gallery and the Contemporary Art Forum in Kitchener, Ontario.

The subject of Klapstock's work is overlooked environments in the city – everyday spaces that are somewhat unfamiliar and marginally inhabited, but nevertheless imprinted with the ‘residue’ of human presence. Since 1998, she has focused on the laneways around her neighborhood, using macroscopic photography to document surface fragments of this environment.

Klapstock writes, "Shot with a macroscopic lens and then enlarged approximately eight times, the Threshold images reveal scenes that exist solely in photographic form and are invisible to the naked eye. Yet, at the same time they present what is depicted in a way that mimics human vision - we are not able to simultaneously see a sharply focused background and foreground. In this work, the camera clearly renders a concrete manifestation of farsightedness, where the foreground is blurred but apparent in its full spectral and textural glory, and the background is in sharp detailed focus.

"Each work is presented like an object excised from reality – a piece of wall cut from its context along with the view that can be glimpsed through the aperture. I am also interested in the way the surface aperture evokes the camera by acting like a camera lens through which a scene is framed. Each uniquely shaped aperture frames and reveals a scene distinctly, intimately tying the scene to the host surface through its aperture.

"The series itself is intended as a conceptual threshold that makes ambiguous the distinctions between real and representational, truth and fiction. The images present everyday scenes that are rendered at once unfamiliar and uncannily familiar, destabilizing our definitions of the abstract and the mimetic by taking us beyond our perceptual capabilities."

 
Other installations

  • Centre for Photography at Woodstock
  • Galleri Image, Åarhus, Denmark
  • Southern Alberta Art Gallery



  • *88 Roxton Road, 2001- 02






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