OFLUXO

P.Bibeau is pleased to announce Time of W, a group exhibition featuring work by James Bradley, Brittany Ham, Alli Melanson, Dionne Lee and Julia Taszycka.

The reference given away in the title of this exhibition elicits the transcendence of time into an object of history when viewed in hindsight. Through each work in Time of W a distillation of time appears as a proctor of detail. Positively, it is through the act of revisiting history that the potential to entertain an ever-expansive refusal to accept that the past is all there is, (or all that potentially lies ahead), arrives. Even as the past continually revives its crisis in the format of a contemporary offering, a clarification must be found.

Time of W was titled for its ability to mark a moment when things changed monumentally for the United States at the start of the new millennium. Non-specific in nature, the works are reliant on broader categories that collectively hint at the past, present, and future. The exhibition presents broad strokes referring to concepts we are forced to revisit again and again, over time and over age.

It is also an obvious homage to the glorious painting from 2009 by James Bradley, Reading Makes a Country Great! (Morning of September 11th, 2001). Painted in 2009 and revisited in 2019, it signals the roots of contemporary entanglements by figuratively referencing a point of the past now guarded and manipulated by the passage and weight of time. ‘The Whisper’, with original text by Brittany Ham, was created in 2019 to accompany Bradley’s painting as a physical addendum.

Dionne Lee uses photography and collage to identify American soil as a site of trauma. ‘‘Fire Starter (I)’ applies Lee’s interest and research in human survival skills in relation to our current landscape while considering its impression and implication on the body. The recurrent use of hands seen in Lee’s work reference a clearing of the land, and are often positioned to locate the north star. In ‘Fire Starter (I)’ flattened hands reference the task of building a fire using the bow drill method. Collaged and layered are images of smoke plumes, clouds, fire-making tools, a damaged wall, and smoke signals. Lee’s use of collage appeals to the idea of isolating points of found and created images through framing, allowing those fragments to lead into organic narratives that host the physicality of memory, emotion, and place.

The use of found and unattributed source images casts a wide net for context, and when removed from its narrative the image relies on the viewer alone to make decisions on what they are witnessing. Alli Melanson uses found documentary images adding text and illustration to engage the distance often felt between real catastrophe and our reality. ‘Banality of Evil’ appropriates the term from Hannah Arendt who considered the human complications regarding actions of terror upon others and the undeniably human ability to remove oneself from consequence or consideration.

Julia Taszycka’s ‘The Viewer’, the single sculpture in the exhibition, presents a physical embodiment related to the notion of ‘game’, of inequality and the consistent struggle for power. The found metal chairs are manipulated into incomplete pieces that could not exist or function without the extension of each other, creating continual tension.