learning to live on the ground
"In empty space we daily brush up against all that is unknown to us. This is what we stare into in daydream, where our thoughts drift and words linger when we strive to understand things beyond us. For some time I have been drawn to visually arouse awareness of this non-visible space which is around as much as inside us, working with materials that are themselves subtly visible. The end result is sometimes difficult to see, demanding a viscerally attentive way of looking -- a practise worth honing.
"Lately I've been working from structures based on stellar maps which are linked to architectural, geographical, or bodily places closer to the ground. In Somewhere behind my heart (2008) a web of monofilament forms a familiar pattern of pores, taken from an enlarged photo of the skin on my back and positioned over a map of stars as they will be situated overhead during afternoons of the exhibition. Between the points of pores and stars are spaces large enough to stand inside. Here I build up loops of thread that disappear into the shadows, imbuing the work with an element of daydream from the inside, as part of its architecture.
-Karilee Fuglem
Other new work, and a video projection, Words take on a life of their own (2000) complete the exhibition.
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Originally from BC Karilee Fuglem has lived in Montreal since 1989, completing an MFA at Concordia University in 1992 and exhibiting widely since then. Earlier this year, Fuglem was part of the exhibition Intrus/Intruders at the Musée national des beaux-arts in Quebec, and States of Materiality at Stewart Hall Gallery. Also this year she presented Corona Borealis, 9-5 at the Art Gallery of Mississauga and here within our curving spaces at the Koffler Gallery, Toronto, which will be documented in a catalogue with an essay by Kim Simon, available in December. In 2007 her environmental sculpture, Imaginary Range was acquired by the National Gallery of Canada after its inclusion in the exhibition Dé-con-structions. Her work is also included in collections of the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec and the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, as well as private collections.
The artist would like to thank Louis Barrette, and the Canada Council for the Arts.
