Photo: Paul Litherland
Paysage nocturne I is made of a cone-like shape lined with rabbit fur and set into in the wall of the gallery. The luminous ends of fibre-optic threads peek through the fur to create constellations of light points. They flicker on and off, controlled by a programmed Arduino circuit board.
This work was originally presented horizontally on the floor in the group exhibition, En obscurité curated by Aseman Sabat, presented at Les Territoires, Montreal in 2011.
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.
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