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Burls and Bundles A perpetual tension exists between the human body and its environment. Both subsist in relation to one another, impacting each other's survival. In this contemporary age, can a balance ever be achieved? Or, are we in a continuum of fragmentation between ourselves and our exterior spaces? The objects I create and draw metaphorically reference the human body in their form and/or materiality. By using the human body as a platform to step off of, I hope to elicit a corporeal response from the viewer visually and potentially through the activation of alternate senses. With this objective in mind, how we culturally perceive the dichotomous states of the human condition are in continual question for myself and poised to the viewer. After spending three years working in a hospital directly with patients, I observed various states of human vulnerability and resilience. This experience engages me to investigate themes of fragility, intimacy, and ephemerality, and how they are in direct correlation to the spaces we occupy. With an open exploration of materials, from domestic to industrial, and an ongoing investigation of interdisciplinary processes from drawing to sculpture, and from fibres to installation, a particular form can go through a mutational process before it becomes what it is in its' final state. My own creative process influences this transformation as I continually experiment with the materials at play, which often leads to new discoveries. This allows me to step back and access the relationships between the components themselves and my own material processes. The biomorphic nature of the forms actualized become connotations of something know, yet unknown, and leads to an uneasiness or uncertainty of their materiality. In this sense, these forms defy their expected categorizations and invite the viewer to question their own relationships -Jen Rae Jen Rae is a visual artist from Edmonton, Alberta. Educated at Grant MacEwan College and the University of Alberta, she completed her BFA in 2003. Currently, she is a graduate student at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec in the MFA Studio Arts program. |
 Exhibition date: May 26 – June 18, 2005 |
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