WINTER 2015

Examining knowledge product-ion and dissemination within art practices, the Spring 2015 exhibitions at SFU Galleries consider how visual art operates beyond formalized learning structures. Responsive public programs will be offered over the span of the exhibitions that include performances, intimate gatherings, discussions and listening events. All exhibitions and programs are free and open to the public.

PROGRAM GUIDE

Geometry of KnowingFEB 28 – MAY 15 2015Part 1, 2, 3, 4 SFU Gallery & Audain Gallery

Derya Akay, Josef Albers, B.C. Binning, Lee Bontecou, Eli Bornowsky, Neil Campbell, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Michael Drebert, Jimmie Durham, Julia Feyrer, Brian Fisher, Jeneen Frei Njootli, Sandra Hanson, Lawren Harris, Camille Henrot, Carole Itter, Dawn Johnston, Brian Jungen, Roy Kiyooka, Devon Knowles, Evan Lee, David MacWilliam, Michael Morris, N.E. Thing Co., Bruce Nauman, Hannah Rickards, Gordon Smith, Frank Stella, Takao Tanabe, Kika Thorne, Kara Uzelman, Brent Wadden

Neil Campbell: InteriorOngoing until APR 11 2015 Teck Gallery

Academic Quadrangle 30048888 University Drive Burnaby, BC Canada V5A 1S6

778.782.4266sfugalleries@sfu.ca

sfugalleries.ca

EXHIBITIONS

Geometry of Knowing Part 1 JAN 15 – FEB 28 2015 SFU Gallery Part 3 MAR 21 – MAY 15 2015 SFU Gallery Geometry of Knowing is a group exhibition that investigates approaches to the acquisition of knowledge in the full mind-body-spirit sense of intelligence. Organized in four parts and presented across two galleries located in a post-secondary pedagogical institution, the objective of the project is to investigate the way in which artists engage tactics of fieldwork, embodiment and materiality in a manner that reveals or instigates a process of knowing. In this moment of increasing standard-ization and specialization regarding how people learn, art is a space for innovative thinking and experi-mentation outside given frameworks.

Many works in the exhibition engage hybrid forms of fieldwork, borrowing methodologies and tools from anthropology, hunting, marine navigation, chemistry, herbology and horticulture. For example, Kika Thorne’s new sculptural work, The Question of a Hunch, extends her ongoing interests in geometry, the visible spec-trum and magnetism as a field upon which to project questions regarding chemical composition and its pol- itical ramifications.

Knowing through embodiment calls into play the ge-ometry of sense perception, communication and col-laboration between artists and physical enactments. For example, Carole Itter’s 1979 photographic series, Euclid, documents artist/musician Al Neil tracing Euclidean geometric theorems in the sand at Cates Park in North Vancouver. These images were projected as part of a collaborative live performance with Al Neil on piano, used on Neil’s Boot and Fog album cover, as well as existing as photographic works in their own right.

Manipulating materials, forms and images is a fund-amental aspect of artistic production and transfig-ures how we experience, interpret and know the world. Camille Henrot’s 2011 video, The Strife of Love in a Dream, for example, composes a visual atlas of strat-egies to conquer anxiety and fear through mythology, medicine, religion, art, ritual and tourism.

At SFU Galleries, we understand the university as a site of knowledge production, dissemination and acquisition. Its architecture is spatial and social, formalizing communal inquiry, contemplation, critique and invention. Situated in this architecture, the exhibition imagines the open geometry of the gallery as a context to re-examine how the visual and mater-ial languages of contemporary art generate experien-tial, emotional, physical, environmental and intuit- ive intelligence. The exhibition Geometry of Knowing explores emerging and reclaimed forms of knowledge as tools to frame how artists consider ways of wit-nessing, being with, querying and generating.

The exhibition includes work by over thirty Canadian and international artists across the first three parts, including works from the SFU Art Collection. The fourth component is constituted as an SFU School for Contemporary Arts visual arts course in which students respond to the exhibition’s theme through archival research.

PUBLICATIONS

Damian Moppett: The BellsThe Bells is the first publication in the SFU Galleries Critical Reader Series. A discursive forum, the series encourages critical writing and projects that run parallel to programming at SFU Galleries.

Focusing on the unfolding ideas raised in Damian Moppett’s exhibition The Bells (SFU Gallery, Janu-ary 18 – April 19, 2014), this publication not only contextualizes Moppett’s layered practice, but also engages with the historical and ongoing space of the studio and visual materiality. New texts by poet Lisa Robertson, writer Sharon Kahanoff and Damian Moppett, and a reprinted 1974 text by artist Hollis Frampton, collectively consider Moppett’s widely referential practice through a myriad of lenses: art historical, material and theoretical. Edited and introduced by Melanie O’Brian. Available through sfugalleries.ca

UPCOMING

SFU’s School for Contemporary Arts BFA Graduating ExhibitionAPR 16 – APR 25 2015 Audain Gallery

(Front) Dawn Johnston, ALL LOST (detail), 2013, black and white toner print. Image courtesy of the artist.

(1) Carole Itter, Euclid (detail from the slide series Euclid’s 13th Theorem which was used in collaboration with an Al Neil performance), 1979. SFU Art Collection.

(2) Brent Wadden, Master of None (detail), 2011. Photo: Hans-Georg Gaul. Image courtesy of the artist and Kinderhook & Caracas.

(3) Neil Campbell, Interior, Teck Gallery, 2014. Photo: Blaine Campbell.

SFU GALLERIES

Simon Fraser University’s art galleries are dynamic centres for the present-ation and interrogation of art practices and ideas. There are three distinct galleries: SFU Gallery on the Burnaby campus (established 1970), Audain Gallery at the Goldcorp Centre for the Arts in Vancouver (established 2010), and Teck Gallery at Harbour Centre in Van-couver (established 1989). SFU Galleries stewards the Simon Fraser Univer-sity Art Collection that includes, in its hold-ings of over 5,500 works, significant regional and national art works span-ning the last century.

sfugalleries@sfu.casfugalleries.ca

SFU GALLERY

SFU Burnaby Campus Academic Quadrangle 30048888 University Drive Burnaby BC, V5A 1S6

TUE - FRI / 12 – 5PM778.782.4266

AUDAIN GALLERY

SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts149 West Hastings Street Vancouver BC, V6B 1H4

TUE – SAT / 12 – 5PM778.782.9102

TECK GALLERY

SFU Harbour Centre 515 West Hastings StreetVancouver BC, V6B 5K3

Open during campus hours 778.782.4266

RELATED EVENTS

Opening Event with Jeneen Frei Njootli and Kara Uzelman WED, JAN 14 / 7PM Audain Gallery

Jeneen Frei Njootli will perform with handmade instruments crafted from female vadzaih (caribou) that embrace and disrupt the hybridity of the Athabascan fiddle in Vuntut Gwitchin culture. Kara Uzelman will provide hospitality with brews that she grew and wildcrafted in Saskatchewan following research into traditions of medicinal fermentation and psychotropic experimentation at the University of Regina.

Event with Derya Akay and Julia FeyrerSUN, FEB 15 / 12PM SFU Gallery

A walk, talk, soil to plow, sow, drink and wait… will explore cycles of harvest and hospitality with Derya Akay and Julia Feyrer in relationship to their work in the exhibition.

Event with SCA students WED, MAR 18 / 7PM Audain Gallery

Event with Kika Thorne SAT, MAR 21 / 12PM SFU Gallery

Extending from her work in the exhibition, Kika Thorne will facilitate a conversation with a scientist and a climate activist on the process of creating a carbon dioxide filter. Whether the process is one of reality or fantasy, the conversation considers engineering and activism in a long line of artistic gestures.

EXHIBITIONS

Neil Campbell: InteriorOngoing until APR 11 2015 Teck Gallery

Vancouver artist Neil Campbell’s work engages with physical space to affect our senses, producing both retinal and phenomenological experience. Interior is a response to the essential structure of the Teck Gallery and an address to the daily use of the site for study, conversation and contemplation. Campbell uses doubled geometric torus forms to establish an oscillating sensation that pulls viewers’ energy while projecting a kinetic force outward. Interior’s illusionistic space offers viewers an experience of sensual intelligence in which cognition, intuition, emotion and rhythm all are brought into play.

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS

Part 1: Derya Akay, Eli Bornowsky, Neil Campbell, Julia Feyrer, Lawren Harris, Roy Kiyooka, Michael Morris, Gordon Smith, Frank Stella, Takao Tanabe

Part 2: Abraham Cruzvillegas, Michael Drebert, Jimmie Durham, Jeneen Frei Njootli, Sandra Hanson, Camille Henrot, Dawn Johnston, Brian Jungen, David MacWilliam, N.E. Thing Co., Kara Uzelman, Brent Wadden

Part 3: Josef Albers, B.C. Binning, Lee Bontecou, Brian Fisher, Carole Itter, Devon Knowles, Evan Lee, Bruce Nauman, Hannah Rickards, Kika Thorne, Brent Wadden

Part 4: Students from the SCA

Curated by Amy Kazymerchyk and Melanie O’Brian. Supported by a Project Grant from the Canada Council for the Arts.

Part 2 JAN 15 – FEB 28 2015 Audain Gallery Part 4 MAR 19 – MAR 28 2015 Audain Gallery

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