Lisa Klapstock documents the urban landscape
All are welcome to meet the artist at an opening reception for
Lisa Klapstock: liminal at the Tom Thomson Memorial
Art Gallery, on Friday, September 23, 2005 at 8 p.m. liminal
opens concurrently with Sarah Nind: Fictions.
There will be two artist talks that evening: Lisa Klapstock
will discuss her work at 7 p.m. and Sarah Nind will give a walkabout
at 8:30 p.m.
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 neighborhood, photographing surface details
and overlooked spaces. Her series of works called 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.
She also shot a series of large-scale photographs called Living
Room that are self-portraits of the artist sitting on a
stranger’s discarded furniture in urban back lanes.
The most recent body of images pair images of landscapes, one
with a figure the other without, thereby grounding the viewer
in a perceived reality hinging on absence and presence.
Klapstock's interventions question our relationship to the built
environment by revealing the hidden and often invisible nooks
and crannies of our urban fabric.
A forthcoming publication on Lisa Klapstock's work will be co-published
by the Southern Alberta Art Gallery, the Kamloops Art Gallery,
and the Tom Thomson Memorial Art Gallery.
In September, Klapstock will be working with area school children
on a photography project called Urban Explorations, allowing
young artists to document their own investigations into new
views of the city. This project is generously supported by Bruce
Power.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
Program.
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Gingham Sofa Bed from the Living Room series, 1998-2002,
C-print mounted on plexiglass |
