With a focus on everyday urban environments, Lisa Klapstock's practice explores mechanisms of seeing and the ways in which photography can affect and challenge visual perception.

Between 1998 and 2002, Klapstock worked in the laneways of her downtown Toronto neighbourhood, photographing surface details and overlooked spaces. Threshold depicts boundaries between laneways and backyards, and the fragmented views glimpsed through gaps and holes in fences and walls, drawing attention to the limitations of vision. Shot with a macro lens and limited depth of field, Threshold reveals scenes that exist solely in photographic form and are invisible to the naked eye.

Her laneway explorations led Lisa Klapstock to Living Room (ongoing): a series of large-scale photographs documenting the hidden life of urban back lanes. In these works, the artist becomes the performer, creating a self-portrait by situating herself as the central figure in a found environment. Garbed in white protective coveralls, Klapstock sits, uninvited, on a stranger's discarded furniture. Through the device of framing, the camera records the artist's occupation of these temporary spaces, drawing our attention to the fragile interface between public and private. Klapstock's interventions question our relationship to the built environment by revealing the hidden and often invisible nooks and crannies of our urban fabric

The artist's most recent production elaborates on her investigation of visual perception. Grey, Green, Black and White supplements Klapstock's still photography with sound and video elements. These landscape-based works are paired with photography which introduces the human figure, thereby grounding the viewer in a perceived reality. The new series of works relates directly to Klapstock's earlier practice and her sustaining interest in human perception, everyday places and their occupation.

A publication documenting Lisa Klapstock's practice will be published jointly by the Southern Alberta Art Gallery, the Kamloops Art Gallery, and the Tom Thomson Memorial Art Gallery.

Lisa Klapstock was born in Kamloops, B.C. She maintains her studio practice in Toronto. She has a Communications degree from Simon Fraser University and a diploma in Sight and Sound Film Production from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. Klapstock has exhibited her photographic work in North America and Europe, including shows at The Center for Photography, New York; Gallery TPW, Toronto; Presentation House Gallery, Vancouver; Centre Vu, Quebec; the Odense Photo Triennial and Galleri Image, Denmark; TENT, The Netherlands; and Le Musée de la Photographie, Belgium (upcoming). International residencies include Stichting Duende, Rotterdam and the Helsinki International Artist-In-Residence Programme.