Presented by Warner Gallery
November 5th – November 19th 2015 By Appointment
Opening 4pm till 8pm
51 Mulock Avenue, Toronto
Entrance Around back
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Phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty theorized that the body is prevented from ever being an object because “it is that by which there are objects.”1 The body is the medium through which we experience innate knowledge, the recognition of self in an(object)(other). In turn, what do objects share, and by what means? Through intuitive communication with an object seen, remembered, or made, perception goes beyond the reach of the five senses.
Connected by the formation of memories, these five artists deal with subconscious impressions felt to be innately true but incommunicable by means other than the tactile gesture. In their work, embodied memory is manifested in multiplicity: anthropomorphic forms, sensually heightened textures, and repetitive actions, as if trying again and again to recreate a moment that is felt but not remembered.
Scholar Laura U. Marks describes the experience of “being able to become an object with and for the world, and to return to being a subject in the world.”2 Implicit in this work is a level of trust between maker and object that allows for concrete representation of a haptic memory or a subliminal reaction to a past experience.
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1 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception. New York: Routledge, 2002. 105
2 Laura U. Marks, Touch. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002. xvi
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Text by Sophia Borowska
