Janice Wu’s “Explanere” @ Open Studio
Open Studio, 401 Richmond Street West, Suite 104, Toronto ON
email: office@openstudio.on.ca
Gallery HoursTuesday through Saturday, 12-5pm
Janice Wu, Explanere (Unfolding the Complexities of Cloth), detail, paper photocopies, each horse 0.5′ x 0.25′ x 0.25′, overall installation 9′ x 16′ x 0.25′, 2006
Open Studio is pleased to present Explanere, a solo exhibition by Calgary-based artist Janice Wu from March 6 to 29, 2008. Explanere is a floor installation laid out as a structured sea of identical hand-folded small paper horses printed in variations of grey tones. The installation reads at once as a mass and as delicate individual structures at closer inspection. The artist meticulously folded, then photocopied, and then folded again each horse, making each copy from its neighbouring horse. The result is waves of shifting tones from dark to light, at times also the result of fading toner or the artist’s manipulation of the photocopier. The labour of folding, copying and laying each individual origami structure is as much about the work as the final installation. This handwork – also reminiscent of textile work – speaks to repetition, form, gesture and recorded memory. As exhibition essay writer Mackenzie Frère writes, “the accumulation of gesture in these folded paper horses, each bearing a record of its predecessor on its surface, comprise Janice Wu’s poetic explanation of the complexity of memory as a dualistic construction of lived experience and that which is recorded.”