Description

Window Poems Two is a group of interventions on windows for the exhibition, L’ombre et la forme at La Salle Alfred-Pellan, Ville de Laval. In the work paper pulp letters are couched directly onto a window in two sections with vowels in the upper part and consonants in the lower section.


Statement

I was interested in how vowels could be a reference to the air necessary for the formation of these letters in our mouths, while using either the tongue, teeth or lips. the sounds of consonants are made by the stopping of air. This suggests that in speaking, the vowels rise into the sky and the consonants fall to the ground. I was also surprised to learn that some ancient texts (Egyptian and Hebrew) omitted the writing of vowels in their texts altogether.

Karen Trask, 2025



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

Karen Trask, cette artiste de l’ombre
Jérôme Delgado (2014). Le Devoir (Critique/Arts visuels–compte rendu de L’ombre et la forme), 27 septembre 2014, E9.

« En vidéo et en sculpture, Karen Trask parle du temps depuis vingt-cinq ans. Elle en parle de toutes sortes de manières, par des projections sur écran, en installations et en une diversité d’objets, opaques ou translucides, sphériques ou plats… En ombre et avec une forme, tel que le dit le titre de l’exposition qui ouvre la saison de la salle Alfred-Pellan, à la Maison des arts de Laval… »