Installation view.
Algae and found materials conglomerate (detail), 2017.
Expandit on linen, found wildflower, polyester tarp, water, 2017.
Installation view.
Alginate and found materials conglomerate, 2017.IMPERSONAL
MATTER
EDWIN ISFORDBUNKER 2
Jul 15 — Aug 05
2017
“If all we are is matter, and if the matter of which we are made is neither originated nor controlled by us—as persons or as a species—then what sense can it make to speak of human beings as critical, creative, or free?”
— Melissa A. Orlie
Drawing attention to things at all scales, the exhibition puts things, rather than human beings, at the heart of studying what it means to exist. The works asks of it’s audiences: what is an object? Or rather, where does the object end and the subject begin?
Responding to the idea of material agency, the exhibition features works framed by their physical properties of growth and process based transformation: a rubber that grows when it’s in contact with water; dried alginate sculptures that take their form from the location where they’re poured, solidifying into atrophied versions of themselves; and cyanotype painted onto found materials that is then exposed as a photogram.
Edwin Isford (b. 1985, Edmonton) lives and works in Montreal.