Headbones Gallery will be featuring the works of artists Alexandra Haeseker and Davida Kidd in an exhibition titled Twice Bitten.
Gallery owner Julie Oakes said that the exhibit will focus on the idea of shifting perceptions.
“With the advent of technological skills that are as handy as a cell phone, or computer images that can be manipulated to the extent that the original content is skewed or even falsified altogether, a sense of unbalance results,” said Oakes. “An alteration in perception can refresh the take on subject matter or it can undermine it.”
She said that the works of both Alexandra Haeseker from Calgary and Davida Kidd from Vancouver play with this potential to shift perception but their approach is each unique.
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Both artists use high-end digital manipulation, coupled with skill and creativity so that the art pieces are “beyond contest as to their aesthetic validity”.
“Haeseker’s shaped printed panels register as having a photo-based origin: what is seen is hard to recognize as anything from reality. The colors are seductive, often brilliant and acidic. The forms within the cut-out silhouettes appear to have been reconstructed, overtly saturated. These vestiges of manipulation give a foot-hold into the work; but still there is a puzzling sensation that there is something more resonating than has been discovered, that there is more evidence of the human in these shapes than is discerned at first glance.”
Haeseker’s works are often autobiographical. Oaks explained that it helps to know that she is of Dutch origin and spent her young years in Indonesia where her parents were working. This series speaks of the body, of disclosure withheld, and of the unbounded possibilities that exist between the artist having decided upon the source of her imagery and the end result, the art work.
“Davida Kidd conversely doesn’t hide what is seen so much as reveals what we might not have considered as connections between the subject matters. Often within an intense or ominous contextualization, there are visual clues that point in the direction of narrative but leave an openness that allows for individual interpretation on the part of the viewer. The subject matter is familiar. There are people and things for which we have names, definitions and contexts, but, she sets up scenes where the order is slightly off, the tempo syncopated, the words of visual phrases rearranged. The ground is precipitous, precarious, but as if in high alert, the consciousness inclines towards a super awareness over and above the usual call to be present.”
She said that Kidd has the scope and the skills to invent so that the position of ‘viewer’ is empowered.
Both Kidd and Haeseker will be in attendance at Headbones Gallery’s opening reception for TWICE BITTEN on Saturday, Feb. 16 from 2- 5 p.m.
Headbones Gallery is located at 6700 Old Kamloops Road.
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