Far Away So Close Part I

Far Away So Close is a series of exhibitions, publications, and events that explores the idea of distance, approaches the bridging of distance as an ultimately quixotic gesture, and investigates the particular relationship of this gesture to art making. Presented over the course of 2014–15 at Access Gallery, each installment features emergent artists who draw upon a variety of methodologies and materials, and whose practices are scattered across the globe.

Part I of Far Away So Close brings particular focus to issues of language and communication. With media ranging from found objects to silkscreened prints, and from cut vinyl to hand-written correspondence, the work of the six artists presented is concerned with describing the gulf that exists between utterance and comprehension, and the always-inadequate means we employ in our perpetual drive to define ourselves and connect with others. They are concerned with desire—the space between what we want and what we have—with longing, and with loss. They explore the disappointments and frustrations of language, and playfully investigate the responsibility we so often ask images and objects to bear—objects that are themselves indifferent to our desires—in our efforts to shuttle meaning across the unpredictable terrain of social life.

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Longings Nicole Kelly Westman is interested in the way images or objects might function as placeholders for narrative. She describes her practice as photo-based: while increasingly made absent from the completed work, there is always a traceable path back to a photographic image, even if that image itself may be staged. In If I were to run away and have a love affair this is all I would wear (2014), Westman considers the ways in which the photograph might house Nicole Kelly Westman If I were to run away and have a love affair this is all I would wear, 2014 Photo credit Dennis Ha

“evidence” of a distant (or longed for) experience, and where the memories (or conjurings) of a remembered (or invented) event might gather should the photographic record be impossible or dangerous. Here, a meticulously chosen suite of garments—which, we might indulge ourselves to imagine, could very well have been compulsively folded, their scent inhaled—stand in as markers of a clandestine, romantic tryst that may or may not have taken place. If I were to run away was produced while the artist was on a work study placement in Banff, Alberta. The final installation grew out of a series of cyanotypes, a simple photographic process often employed by early surveyors and botanists to record their encounters with new flora, in which the impression of an object is fixed on a photo-sensitized surface using sunlight.

Almost like sunburns, Westman’s cyanotypes recorded

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fleeting evidence of an intensity of place and experience

but were edited out during the artist’s working process, to remain here only as a distant, decidedly spectral, and possibly fictive trace.

Descriptions Often working with text and language, Erdem Taşdelen’s practice makes subtle inquiries into the nature and representation of subjectivity and personal identification. He draws from a diverse set of references to playfully question his own existence in various social realms. For The Conduit (2013), Taşdelen worked with two professional graphologists (handwriting analysts) in order to deliver what he terms “an experimental meta-analysis on the field of graphology.”

Erdem Taşdelen The Conduit, 2013 Photo credit Dennis Ha

The work consists of a series of original letters documenting a two-step process in which Taşdelen first requested handwritten reports on his own handwritten script from each of the two graphologists, and then forwarded the analysts’ reports to one another and asked them to each professionally analyze the otherʼs handwriting. The resulting work points to the subjective involvement of the analysts in the process of analysis itself, undermines the singular authority of the analyst, and suggests the tenuous and contingent channels through which we long to define ourselves and be defined.

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Shadows Jim Verburgʼs work in photography, video, print, installation, and text subtly mines the intricacies of romantic and familial relationships.

Often working with abstraction, his images suggest a kind of emotional geography: the strata of connections and dissonance that constitute our experience of intimacy. Verburg’s newest body of work makes extensive use of light and shadow, which in this exhibition appear by way of black vinyl applied to the corner of a wall Jim Verburg Untitled (reflected/repeated ) (left), Untitled (reflected/repeated ) (right), 2014 Photo credit Dennis Ha

(Untitled [introspection], 2014), by the creases and curls of reflective paper (Untitled [from within], 2014), and by layers of ink rolled onto glass then transferred onto newsprint (Untitled [reflected/repeated ,

and

], 2014). The method

of applying contrasts of light and shadow to achieve a sense of three-dimensional volume in a picture—a technique known as chiaroscuro—has been used by artists in the West since the sixteenth century to evoke the solidity of bodies and shape of a terrain. But as Lisa Robertson remarks in her recent book of prose essays Nilling, “chiaroscuro is also the technique of the uncanny. I am etched with unknowing as I continue.” (13) Indeed, as Verburg seems to posit, it is through a thicket of shadows—of uncertainty, doubt, and vulnerability—that we traverse in our relationships with others. This topography is one that we can never fully grasp 10

or inhabit. But it is this same shadowy space which gives

form and definition to life itself, and to the fated complications that define our connections with others.

Gestures Working across a range of media, Sarah Stein’s installations are concerned with the way phenomena are experienced and translated through perception and language.

Her persistent interest, as she says, is in “finding ways to understand the invisible through the visible.” That which is tactile and material in Stein’s practice is used to transcribe, to trace or to utter that which is felt but remains unseen. Nothing was said but a gesture, and when you listened the gestures became flowers (2012) is a collaborative work conceived of and produced with the Korea-based artist Hyemin Kim. The artists met while

Sarah Stein with Hyemin Kim Nothing was said but a gesture, and when you listened the gestures became flowers (a conversation of objects), 2012 Photo credit Dennis Ha

in graduate study at the Hoogeschool voor de Kunsten in Utrecht, The Netherlands. Together in the same space, but distanced both from that place and from one another by cultural and linguistic differences, Stein and Kim initiated a conversation uttered entirely through hand-made and found objects. Rather than verbal or written language, the forms of the things themselves—their materials and relation to other objects in the sequence—became the body of a strange and ultimately befuddling dialogue. Exchanged over a period of six weeks, the objects were envisioned as bridges or transporters of meaning, but the information

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they carried was opaque and unrecognizable. Mute and indifferent to the artists’ desires, the objects in the end appeared to the artists to assert their own agency. An accompanying video work records a follow-up conversation, with Kim speaking in Korean and Stein in English, which attempts to retrace the object-dialogue after the exchange.

Punctuated by misunderstandings, laughter, and pauses of awkward silence, the artists’ voices give further shape to the space between utterance and understanding.

Translations Working across numerous media, Hyung-Min Yoon’s practice is concerned with ideas of translation, ambiguity, and contradiction. One of Yoon’s current interests is focused on the role that printing technologies have had on the dissemination of ideas through time. Produced while in residence at the Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna, in 2013, Magic Hands is a series of prints that bring Renaissance Christian hand gestures into strange collusion with Hyung-Min Yoon Magic Hands, Number , 2013 Photo credit Dennis Ha

the instructional text from magic manuals. The twelve silkscreened images isolate and dramatically enlarge the hands and sleeves from one of Albrecht Dürer’s sixteenth century woodcut versions of the Passion of Christ, known by scholars as the Small Passion. Removed from the elaborate

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symbology of their surrounding context, the hand gestures

themselves—now delicately poised or pawing at the empty air—become enigmatic and opaque. Yoon has “bookended” these images, as it were, with two texts from a common book of magic tricks. Edited to remove any specifically named objects or tools, the words offer a peculiar poetry that obscures their meaning, placing it only just out of reach.

Yoon printed Magic Hands on antique papers produced in the mid nineteenth-century that were once owned by the famed Albertina museum in Vienna; the existing pencil markings and spots of glue reveal the presence of further obtuse, inaccessible histories.

Summonings Two further artists—Raymond Boisjoly and Vanessa Kwan— were invited to contribute to this present volume (the first a series of three) by way of meditations on distance.

Boisjoly and Kwan, both established within and working from Vancouver, speak from different places but share a concern for language, loss, and mistranslations. Writing, for both, is a vital aspect of artistic practice. These texts and drawings sit alongside the works of Hyemin Kim, Sarah Stein, Jim Verburg, Erdem Taşdelen, Nicole Kelly Westman, and Hyung-Min Yoon, offering neither interpretation of the exhibition’s forms nor elucidation of its focus. What they bring, instead, is a conjuring, a fugitive summons, of the shadowy, seductive space between any image and how it is seen; between any object and how it is felt; between any utterance and how it is heard.

Works Cited Lisa Robertson, Nilling: Prose.

Ontario: Bookthug, 2012.

Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated: A Novel. New York: Harper Perennial, 2003.

A note: Language, a phenomenon with a social dimension, may also produce shared misunderstandings. There are statements which have always and will only deceive. This is not their purpose, this is simply an unintended result and an example of how we become ‘caught’ in our mutual misunderstandings through communicative exchanges. I had intended to write about Jean Favret Saada’s observations about witchcraft and the manner in which she was implicated in the practice simply by studying it. The people of the Bocage in Mayenne, France were convinced this anthropologist would want to put her newly gained knowledge of sorcery into practice, otherwise, why bother learning about it? Favret Saada explains that to speak of something is to be truly ‘caught’ by the something spoken of, there is no possibility of a neutral position in relation to knowledge. Taking a cue from this, I read a portion of Roman Jakobson’s Six Lectures on Sound and Meaning (

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) to my iPhone. These are the results.

Iʼm sure you are familiar with and Gralin pose famous pome the Raven north itʼs melancholy refrained nevermore this is the only word uttered by the ominous visitor in the poet emphasizes that what it utters is itʼs only stock in-store this vocable which amounts to know more than a few sounds is none the less rich and semantic content it announces negation negation for the future negation forever this prophetic refrain is made up of seven sounds seven because Paul insists on including the final are witches he says the most producible consonant it is able to project us into the future or even into a turn 80 it well it is rich and what it discloses is even richer and what it secretes in its wealth of virtual connotations of those particular connotations which are indicated by the context of it onto rents or by the overall narrative situation abstracted from its particular context it carries an indefinite range of implications I took myself to linking fancy into fancy the poet tells us thinking with this ominous bird if youʼre with this agreement game link ghastly Gunton on this bird of your Menton croaking nevermore this I sent in gaged in guessing this and more I sent divining given the context of the dialogue the refrain conveys a series of different meanings you will never forget her you will never regain peace of mind you will never again embrace her I will never leave you moreover the same word can function as a name the symbolic name which the poet bestows upon this not his nocturnal visitor and this expressions values not entirely accounted for in terms of itʼs purely semantic value narrowly defined i.e. itʼs general meeting plus itʼs contingent contextual meanings

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to himself tells us that it was the potential onomatopoeia and quality of the sounds of the word nevermore which suggested to him it始s association with the croaking of Raven and which was even the inspiration for the whole palm also although the boat has no wish to weaken the sameness the monotony of the refrain will he repeatedly introduces it in the same way coif the Raven nevermore it is nevertheless certain that variation of its phone and qualities such as modulation of town stress and cadence the detailed articulation of the sounds of the groups of sounds that such variations allow the motor value of the word to be quantitatively and qualitatively varied and all kinds of ways the utterance of pose refrain involves only A very small number of articulatory motions were to look at this from the point of view of the acoustic rather than the motor aspect of speech only a small number of vibratory motions are necessary for the word to be heard and short only minimal Fonick means are required in order to express and communicate a wealth of conceptual motive in a static content year we are directly confronted with the mystery of the idea embodied in Fonick matter the mystery of the word of the linguistic symbol of the logos Mistry which requires elucidation of course we have known for a long time that a word like any verbal sign is the unity of two components the sign has two sides the sound or the material side on the one hand and meeting or the intelligible side on the other 18

every word and more generally every verbal sign is a

combination of sound and meaning were to put another way a combination of signifier and signified a combination which is been represented day grammatically as follows but while the fact that there is such a combination is perfectly clear it始s structure is remain very little understood the sequence of sounds can function is the vehicle for the meaning but how exactly do the sounds perform this function what exactly is the relation between sound in meaning within a word or within language generally in the end this comes down to the problem of identifying the ultimate Fonick elements were the smallest units bearing signifying value would始ve put this metaphorically it is a matter of identifying the quantitive language in spite of it始s fundamental importance for the science of language is only recently that this set of problems as it was been submitted to through and systematic investigation it would certainly be wrong to them or their brilliant insights concerning the role of sounds and language which can be found scattered through the work of the thinkers of antiquity end of the middle ages for example those of Thomas Aquinas who is among the most profound philosophers of language and it would equally be wrong to nor the subtle observations of the ancient Oriental and above all Hindu grammarians but it is only in the last two centuries that her science is devoted so freely energetically to the detailed study of linguistic owns this interesting linguistic soon始s derived it first from essentially practical objectives such as singing technique

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teaching the deafened dumb to speak rails for nation was studied by physicians is a complex problem and human physiology but during the 19 century is linguistics gained ground with his science which gradually took over research into the sounds of language research which came to be called phonetics the second half of the 19 century link with sticks became dominated by the most na茂ve form of sensualist and pierces him focusing directly inexcusably on sensations as one would expect the intelligible aspects of language it signifying inspect the world of meanings was lost sight of zips cured but sensuous perceptible and spanked by the substantial material aspects of sound semantics for the study of meaning remained undeveloped phonetics made rapid progress even came to occupy the central place in the Scientific study of language the new grammarian school of thought it was the most orthodox and characteristic turn to start linguist exit the time which was dominant in the last quarter of the 19 century to the first world war rigorously excluded from linguistics all problems of teleology the search for the origin of linguistic phenomena obstinately refuse to recognize that their goal directed study for English but never stopped as count functions to satisfy cultural needs one of the most distinguished of the new grammarians when asked about the content of the Lithuanian manuscript which he been assiduously studying only reply with embarrassment as for the content I didn始t notice it at this time thing best to get it forms in isolation from their functions and most important most typical of the school in question was the way in which 20

they regarded think we stick sounds in conformity with

the spirit of the time if you was a strict impure assistant naturalistic one The fact that linguistics answer signifiers was deliberately put aside for these linguist were not at all concerned with the linguistic functioning sentence but only with sounds as such with their flesh and blood aspect that regard for the role they play in language

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— I am thinking about magic, as I write this. Magic and communication, and magic and loss, and when all the magic you have conjured in yourself and in others is not quite enough.

It starts with the idea that we are capable of it at all, for why else would we keep stones and talismans and images and mementoes of lives. There is something in our collections that supposes these objects can transport us, can deliver something to us. That what is not here, now, could be somewhere, still.

And why else would we use language like a charm, compelling transformation? —

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—

—

The story of you and I might be

On weight

simply told by a short description

You can use a plumb line—a weight on

of phenomena, readable through

a string—to determine if something is

this constellation of things:

perfectly vertical. The noun aplomb stems from a stoic relationship

A prism

to gravity: to handle a difficult

A ball of string

situation and still be on your feet.

A compass A short fork, a long spoon

(We fell.)

Two depictions of clouds Baby teeth A plumb bob A magnifying glass A billy club A gold pocket watch Silver hammered into the shape of a bowl until it split A porcelain finger A bristle from a street sweeper A coin that says “SEX” A card that reads “Mercy” A picture of birds

— On refracted light Light passes through a lens, and changes direction, or else in the case of prism-effects, a full spectrum is pulled from a single beam.

(We separated.)

— On mercy …

(This is the hard part.)

—

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— I never sent you this letter: Dear x., One sunny day many years ago we went swimming at Hicks Lake. Despite the threat of swimmers itch, we had a great time in that warm lake. I lost my goggles that day, after jumping off that little wharf thingy; you remember?

But before I did, I recall paddling about, looking at you in the water. There was a moment when you dove off the dock—a deep dive and a slow rise to the surface—and the sun was shining on you through the water, and your eyes were closed, and you looked so beautiful and peaceful and weightless. I just floated there, watching you.

There are some moments that can transcend all the human shit that our lives include, and this was one of them.

I will always hold that, and you, dear.

Love, V. —

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— Do you know about transmutation?

There was someone I used to go to high school with.

On Mondays in English class she would sometimes tell us about how she turned into a ghost cat on the weekend. The details were precise: it is painful to grow fur through your human skin and your spine moves differently when you walk through walls. She was a witch, and the first openly queer person I think I knew.

I want us to be elsewhere, beyond the laws of gravity and nature. This crystal, that skull, your heart, my good intentions; all of these put into words to bring about this other world. I have been making spells, in letters and notes, in my mind as I sleep, and in conversations that go like stones into still lakes.

I’m a bad fucking witch.

—

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— Carve this stave on a slip of oak or red spruce, and you will see the ghost.* — Witches don’t float, nor do our desires. You did, in that long ago memory, and I’ve been conjuring your ghost ever since.

Mercy for that old moment. Mercy to let it be.

—

*This text was encountered at the Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft in Hólmavík, Iceland.

Drawings by Vanessa Kwan

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— Sarah Stein with Hyemin Kim Nothing was said but a gesture, and when you listened the gesture became flowers (a conversation of objects), 2012 installation of objects, dimensions variable video, 35 minutes duration

— Erdem Taşdelen The Conduit, 2013 handwriting samples and analysis reports, 21 sheets installation dimensions variable Courtesy of the artist and Galeri non, Istanbul

— Jim Verburg Untitled (reflected/repeated ), 2014 mono print oil based ink painted on glass—rolled, transferred, and layered onto newsprint 61 x 91.5 cm

Jim Verburg Untitled (reflected/repeated

), 2014

mono print oil based ink painted on glass—rolled, transferred, and layered onto newsprint 48 x 56 cm 35

Jim Verburg Untitled (reflected/repeated

), 2014

mono print oil based ink painted on glass—rolled, transferred, and layered onto newsprint 61 x 91.5 cm

Jim Verburg Untitled (from within), 2014 reflective paper folded and adhered to a wall installation dimensions variable

Jim Verburg Untitled (introspection), 2014 black vinyl adhered to a corner installation dimensions variable

Jim Verburg Untitled (zero sum game), 2011 2 stacks of newsprint dimensions (installation) variable and changing 57 x 89 cm unfolded

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— Nicole Kelly Westman If I were to run away and have a love affair this is all I would wear, 2014 assembled clothing installation dimensions variable

— Hyung-Min Yoon Magic Hands, 2013 silk screen on antique paper series of 14 images, each 33 x 43 cm Edition of 5

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Sarah Stein with Hyemin Kim Nothing was said but a gesture, and when you listened the gestures became flowers (a conversation of objects), 2012 Photo credit Dennis Ha

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41

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Erdem TaĹ&#x;delen The Conduit, 2013 Photo credit Dennis Ha

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Jim Verburg Untitled (introspection), 2014 Photo credit Dennis Ha

Jim Verburg Untitled (from within), 2014 Photo courtesy of the artist

Jim Verburg Untitled (reflected/repeated Photo credit Dennis Ha

), 2014

Jim Verburg Untitled (zero sum game), 2011 Photo credit Dennis Ha

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Nicole Kelly Westman If I were to run away and have a love affair this is all I would wear, 2014 Photo credit Dennis Ha

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Hyung-Min Yoon Magic Hands, Number (Meet), 2013 Photo credit Dennis Ha

Hyung-Min Yoon Magic Hands, Number , 2013 Photo credit Dennis Ha

Hyung-Min Yoon Magic Hands, Number , 2013 Photo credit Dennis Ha

Sarah Stein Sarah Stein is a Canadian artist working across media including drawing, photography, writing and video. Her installations are concerned with the way phenomena are experienced and translated through perception and language. What is material and physical is used to transcribe, trace, and get nearer to what is felt but remains unseen or unknowable. Sarah holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Victoria, a bfa from Emily Carr University of Art and Design, and a Master of Arts in Fine Arts degree from the Hoogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht (mahku), The Netherlands.

She currently lives and works in Berlin, Germany.

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Hyemin Kim Hyemin Kim was born in Seoul, South Korea, and works with drawing, photography, sculpture, sound pieces, and installation. She deals mainly with the relationship between language and image, exploring how individuals create their own words and convey messages with semantic primes.

She holds a bfa degree in sculpture from Hongik University in 2009, Seoul, South Korea, and a Masters degree in Fine Arts from the Hoogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht (mahku), The Netherlands. She lives and works in Suwon, South Korea.

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Erdem Taşdelen Erdem Taşdelen grew up in Switzerland, Germany, and Turkey, and currently lives in Vancouver. His multidisciplinary practice involves a range of media, including installation, drawing, sculpture, video, sound, and artist books. He uses text and language in various forms to conduct subtle inquiries into subjectivity and its representations. His diverse projects, characterized by a mordant humour, involve him in a self-reflexive process that brings selfexpression into question within the context of culturally learned behaviours. His work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions at the Western Front, Republic Gallery, 221a, Gallery 295, and the Charles H. Scott Gallery in Vancouver; Oakville Galleries in Toronto; Galeri non, arter, and Sanatorium in Istanbul; mak—Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna; Kunstverein Hannover; Hauskonstruktiv in Zürich; and Biennial of the Americas in Denver. Taşdelen is a 2014 recipient of the Charles Pachter Prize for Emerging Artists, awarded by The Hnatyshyn Foundation.

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Jim Verburg Jim Verburg is a citizen of Canada and the Netherlands, who currently lives in Toronto. His artistic practice is mainly concerned with the complexities of relationships. Working with photography, video, text, installation, and print to explore his love of minimalism, emotional matters, and the interpersonal. Past exhibitions include For a Relationship (Zürich), Portrait Study (Prague), Domestic Queens (Montreal), So Many Letdowns Before We Get Up (Winnipeg), and his 2011 solo exhibition One and Two for Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal (for which he was awarded the Dazibao prize).

Recent shows include Where I Lived, and What I Lived For (Oakville), Weights and Measures (Peterborough), and More Than Two (Let It Make Itself) (Toronto). This year Verburg was the focus of the solo exhibition Afterimage at Galerie Nicolas Robert in Montreal, and the group exhibition Primeiro Estudo: Sobre Amor at Luciana Caravello Arte Contemporânea (Rio de Janeiro). He has held residencies at the National Film Board of Canada, Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography (Toronto), and The Banff Centre (Alberta). His film For a Relationship won the 2008 Jury Prize for the Best Canadian Short Film at the Inside Out Film Festival (Toronto), and was nominated for the Iris Prize (UK). His first book O/ Divided/Defined, Weights, Measures, and Emotional Geometry, was released by Dazibao (Montreal) in 2013. Work from the publication was featured by Art Metropole at Art Basel Miami. He is currently the artist in residence at Open Studio in Toronto.

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Nicole Kelly Westman Nicole Kelly Westman is a visual artist who grew up in a supportive home with strong-willed parents—her mother, a considerate woman with inventive creativity, and her father, an anonymous feminist. Her work culls from these formative years for insight and inspiration.

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Hyung-Min Yoon Born in Seoul and now based in Vancouver, Hyung-Min Yoon received her mfa at Chelsea College of Art & Design in 2008. She was awarded the 2014 grand prize by public art magazine, and is concurrently an artist in residence at the Gyeonggi Creation Centre, Korea. In 2013, she was resident artist at Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna. In the past two years, her work has been included in numerous group shows including Taehwa River Eco Art Festival, Ulsan, Korea; From Nature at Equinox Gallery, Vancouver; The Moment of Transition at the Austrian Cultural Forum, Budapest; and Little Bit of History Deleting at Galerie Peithner-Lichtenfels, Vienna. In 2012, her curatorial project Translation Services received Canada Council support for a multi-part exhibition at 221a, Vancouver. Recent solo exhibitions include Magic Hands at Wumin Art Centre, Korea, and her upcoming exhibition The Book of Jests will be presented at grunt gallery in September, 2014.

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Raymond Boisjoly Raymond Boisjoly is an Indigenous artist of Haida and Québécois descent from Chilliwack, BC, currently based in Vancouver. His work engages issues of Indigeneity, language as a cultural practice, and experiential aspects of materiality. Boisjoly has participated in exhibitions at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, The Vancouver Art Gallery, Western Bridge, Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver), and numerous artist-run centres. Boisjoly was awarded a Fleck Fellowship from the Banff Centre in 2010. He is represented by Catriona Jeffries Gallery.

Boisjoly is also participating in the upcoming exhibitions lines

: Unsettled Landscapes, site Santa Fe and

Lʼavenir (looking forward), La Biennale de Montréal.

Carleton University Art Gallery will present new and recent works in fall 2014 in an exhibition titled Interlocutions.

This fall, Boisjoly will serve as Lead Faculty for “In Kind” Negotiations, a thematic residency at the Banff Centre.

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Vanessa Kwan Vanessa Kwan is a Vancouver-based artist and curator.

Her work has been exhibited at a number of galleries and artist-run centres; solo exhibitions include Your Private Sky at the Or Gallery, The Storm and the Fall at Access Gallery, and Your Private Sky at the Art Gallery of the South Okanagan (Penticton). Public art commissions include Vancouver Vancouver Vancouver (2010) and Geyser for Hilcrest Park (2012, with Erica Stocking), both for the City of Vancouver.

She is a founding member of the arts collective Norma, which received a Mayor’s Arts Award for Public Art in 2011. Other recent projects include Sad Sack, a series of collaborations on the subject of melancholy, and Everything Between Open and Closed, a study of signs. She currently works as Curator of Special Projects at grunt gallery, and was Curator of Performance at the Vancouver Art Gallery from 2008–2014.

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222 East Georgia Street Vancouver, British Columbia v6a 1z7 accessgallery.ca Access Gallery is a platform for emergent and experimental art practices. We enable critical conversations and risk taking through new configurations of audience, artists, and community.

Access gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Province of BC through the BC Arts Council and BC Gaming, the City of Vancouver, The Leon and Thea Koerner Foundation, the Audain Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Hamber Foundation, our donors, members, and volunteers. Access is a member of the Pacific Association of Artist Run Centres.

Published by Access Gallery

isbn 978-0-9866688-5-2

Kimberly Phillips, Director/Curator Areum Kim, Curatorial Assistant

Edition of 75 Series editor: Kimberly Phillips

to accompany the exhibition

Layout: Chelsey Doyle Printed in Canada by Bond Reproductions

Far Away So Close: Part I Sarah Stein with Hyemin Kim

Copyright © Access Gallery and the

Erdem Taşdelen

contributing authors and artists, 2014.

Jim Verburg

Content from this book cannot be

Nicole Kelly Westman

reproduced without express written

Hyung-Min Yoon

permission from the publisher.

September 13–November 1, 2014 Curated by Kimberly Phillips