Absence and Presence
Featuring:
Sarah Davidson
Catherine Haggarty
Sofia Quirno
Nishiki Sugawara-Beda
Curated by Laura Horne
This project investigates what is not there and what is, through the theme of absence and presence encompassing loss/belonging, disappearance/closeness, omission/creation, erasure/validation. When there is a lack of matter (visually) absence becomes a standard that is there as an implication of an event or object. When certain objects are present (visually) we are reminded of what is not there by their presence. Absence and presence become parallels existing at the same time in the void.
Sarah Davidson
Davidson works primarily between drawing and painting to create compositions in which shadowy, biomorphic figures and delicate, foliated fragments mingle. Making reference to a history of discourses constructing the ‘natural’ world, their works investigate bodies, environment, observation, and the tangled strings which often bind them together. While they often draw directly from ‘nature’, their drawings diffract distinctions between embodied self and other through a queer ecological lens.
Catherine Haggarty
Haggarty's paintings are always reacting to the hand and the inadequacies that it and the materials bring to the making. Specific light sources & multiple perspectives conflate to confuse space - this is intentional. Using diverging perspectives as a tool to narrate and confuse a painting space is important to me. The paintings reflect multiple perspectives; in doing so, it shows there is not one truth or way to read them
Sofia Quirno
Grappling with themes of existence, longing, femininity, and spiritual life, Quirno uses paint, ink, paper, new and found materials to suggest a world inhabited with unconventional figurations, metaphors, and entanglements. Exposing what is heard from; the mind and inner voices with irony, the group of displayed pieces intends to question existing structures, vulnerability, and the sayings of the commonplace.
Nishiki Sugawara-Beda
Consciously cultivating a mindless state of mind where marks are made on the surface is vital. The marks, which create forms, areas, patterns, layers, and seemingly tangible objects, can hold the essence of ideas, cultures, values, morals, and visceral emotions. The mark can be simple, yet holds everything. The essential is the focus, and it is most accessible in abstract forms because it enables us to connect both with the essential and with each other.
![KuroKuroShiro T+S III 72 2000[2]_edited.jpg](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/1a1d7e_a01c829ba6d244c3a291ea80834cd728~mv2.jpg/v1/fit/w_741,h_741,q_90/1a1d7e_a01c829ba6d244c3a291ea80834cd728~mv2.webp)
Absence and Presence
Curated by Laura Horne / TussleProjects
Featuring:
Sarah Davidson
Catherine Haggarty
Sofia Quirno
Nishiki Sugawara-Beda
This project investigates what is not there and what is, through the theme of absence and presence encompassing loss/belonging, disappearance/closeness, omission/creation, erasure/validation. When there is a lack of matter (visually) absence becomes a standard that is there as an implication of an event or object. When certain objects are present (visually) we are reminded of what is not there by their presence. Absence and presence become parallels existing at the same time in the void.
These artists, Sarah Davidson, Catherine Haggarty, Sofia Quirno, and Nishiki Sugawara-Beda contain qualities of this mysterious parallel. When observing the process, what is added to the work and what is erased, it becomes simultaneous with the moment of conception, the idea. How is it that something can come from nothing? Artists consistently speak of having a blank mind before creating, a mind that is ready to enter another dimension where language is visual, and experience is the outcome.
This theme also considers the finished work and how the viewer views it with the absence of the artist. The idea that “the viewer completes a work of art” - Duchamp. There are so many components being considered as the artist moves through the creation of their work. This is a fascinating age-old question with many answers…
Haggarty’s work reflects on her life in space. The messages surrounding us… Similarly, Quirno’s work is inspired by everyday events and is an ongoing conversation in flux. The events experienced by these artists subliminally seep into their work becoming visual connections to our collective existence. The presence of objects in their life are also translated during the creation process to become part the experience.
Davidson’s technically complex work focuses on a voyeuristic interpretation of amphibious eyes and human, where the body is absent from the image. Sugawara-Beda’s black and white landscapes begin from the process of clearing her mind until it is absent of thought, this is when image and idea can develop side by side. The corporeality of these works in their finality is one of identity and change. Once completed and hanging with the artist absent: What does the viewer complete with their own action of looking? As eyes return their gaze like a mimicked discovery of identity, vast spaces left blank in a landscape or interior, in turn can assimilate human experience.
Color, form and figurative aspects connect us through subliminal gestures from the void… These works contain primordial frequencies and fluctuations pertaining to the presence (beginning) of all things and lead to the absence (future) of them, concurrently.