BLURRED LINES presents a selection of new and recent works from gallery artists: Sarah Bertrand-Hamel, Brandon Dalmer, Hidenori Ishii, Jeanette Johns, Yen-Chao Lin and Sarah Tompkins, with a point of departure around the exploration of geometry as both a visual strategy and re-structuring of thought. Present in the work of all six artists in the exhibition, the use of geometrical visual tactics underlines distinct meanings and interpretations with each artistic iteration, while drawing a curious blend of attention and amusement from the viewer.  

 

Working primarily with the medium of paper, Sarah Bertrand-Hamel (1981-) is inspired by its material transformations and its renewed potentialities through reconstruction. Pursuing notions of transition and perpetual movement, Bertrand-Hamel investigates the unceasing emergence of beings and things which are integrating into one another to exist in new forms.

 

Exploring the intersection of digital and physical mediums, the practice of Brandon Dalmer (1984-) investigates the correlation between these two realms by exploring the impact of the artificial on our sense of perception. Developing his own systems of code to procedurally generate and manipulate digital compositions, Dalmer seeks to convert the digital medium back to a physical one, and in doing so, encourages the viewer to unpack the origins of an image.

 

Hidenori Ishii (1978-) investigates the paradoxical dichotomy of civilization and nature through the interdependence which lies in between. Specifically, his work approaches the social and environmental landscape through a fusion of art historical connections, personal narratives, and socio-political subject matter.

 

The work of Jeanette Johns (1983-) is based on observation and the gaze, focusing particularly on two-dimensional representations of space. Through drawing, photography, and etching, she elegantly explores scientific systems of representing the world such as diagrams, perspective games, and optical illusions. Also interested in the landscape genre, Johns draws on theoretical and empirical knowledge to produce images that exist on the border between mathematics, geometry, and decorative design.

 

Through means of intuitive play, collaboration, scavenging and collecting, the tactile practice of Yen-Chao Lin (1983-) incorporates various craft techniques, such as copper enamelling, ceramic, textile, and gilding, to create installations, sculptures, and experimental films. As a natural history enthusiast and an avid collector, Yen-Chao gathers specimens of mineral, botanical, animal and industrial origins, including objects that stare at the vestiges of a recent or distant past, with a story to tell. 

 

Woking in abstract painting, Sarah Tompkins (1990-) employs an action-response method of composition, where each layer of the work is a conscious response to an earlier, unconscious layer of painting. At the core of this process are a number of antagonistic self-imposed systems which are concerned with shifting states of control, addition and erasure.