Description

De l’envers is a recycled paper sculpture with a pair of cast paper hands rising like handles out of both sides of a wide bowl-shaped form. The hands reaching up are cast from the artist’s hands; the fingers are bent, pointing downward as if ready to grasp something. Because of the undercuts, the hands were difficult to cast and had to be meticulously pieced together. The bowl was first carved in Styrofoam and then covered in gray paper pulp. Once dry, the surface was given a stone-like patina using oil sticks.


Statement

De l’envers was created during a period when I was reading about psychology and early women’s history. The piece reflects my interest in the historic roles and symbolic representations of women. For me, there is something ancient about this work, as if it comes from another era.

The nature of the hands in the sculpture is ambiguous. It is difficult to know if they are emerging from the bowl or being absorbed by it. Whether something is coming together or falling apart is a preoccupation in many of my works.

De l’envers was awarded the Abitibi-Price Paper award in the Biennale du dessin, de l’estampe et du papier, 1989.

Karen Trask & Don Goodes, 2024



Exhibition History

September 14 – November 16, 2014
La salle Alfred-Pellan, Laval, Québec, Canada
Description

Shadow and Form brings together works by Karen Trask from 1989 to 2014.

L’ombre et la forme propose au visiteur un espace de découverte d’expériences sensibles. On y retrouve des notions importantes dans l’œuvre de l’artiste montréalaise Karen Trask : l’acte de faire et de défaire, l’impossibilité de fixer le temps, l’emprise des images et la portée des mots dans l’imaginaire et la mémoire.

Statement

Karen Trask’s exhibition L’ombre et la forme underlines her fascination for the fluid and transformable nature of the primary materials: water, air and light. In her work, Karen Trask evokes the impossibility of stopping time, affirms the importance of words and the process of making and touch. Repeated gestures of a patient and continuous labour to produce an image, an object or a form inscribes the work of Karen Trask in a practice associated to process, to duration and a subtle manifestation of erosion. The sculptures, the photographic images, the videos, the objects and the words of this exhibition translate what the artist qualifies as little nothings: these unusual experiences where simplicity finds a form. Sensitive to the process of creation and the notion of time in a work, Nicole Gingras is the curator of this exhibition, accompanying the artist in her reflection.

Source: Wall text for the exhibition, La Maison des arts de Laval, 2014

Curator(s)
Nicole Gingras

Publications

Le Québec n’est pas en reste en arts graphiques
Lyne Crevier (1989). Le Devoir, Montréal, mardi 27 juin 1989

An article about the Biennale du dessin de l’estampe et du papier.

La Biennale du dessin est à Alma pour y rester
Marie Delagrave (1989). Le Soleil, samedi 17 juin 1989

An article about the Biennale du dessin de l’estampe et du papier, Alma, Québec