October 23rd to November 14th, 2008
The Visual Art Theory class for Studio is pleased to announce its upcoming group exhibition, Thumbsucker. Featuring mixed media work by Erin Catherall, Rebecca Chen, Anna Cheung, Lok Him Fung, Dawn Goldberg, Perrin Grauer, Ervin Hadzic, Christopher Hettel, Jordana Hovis, Karen La, Anthony Lam, Hayley HJ Lee, Linda Lin, Eddie Liu, Kate Nadeau, Gathaiya Njoora, Holly Parmley, Eric Rissiek, Warren Scheske, Bita Tabrizi, Adam Tragakis, Andrea Van Schubert, Agnieszka Wojdyla, Carolina Wong, Kelvin Yip and Kenneth Yuen. The exhibition takes place in the Ridington Reading Room in the Irving K Barber Library, at the University of British Columbia from October 23rd to November 14th, 2008.
The premise of Thumbsucker is to transform everyday books into facets of essential truths, sublime moments or pure nothingness. From a Utopic book of secrets that is sadly but appropriately blank, to unprocessed photographic paper paper that gets more and more overexposed as each viewer opens it to hopes of fulfilling their curiosities. Other pieces in Thumbsucker try to find meaning in the blank and invisible, they may uncover the idea of the invisible through the spaces in between, and actually create casts of the space between the pages or even emptying out the content of a book just to have it look right back at you. Many times access is just not granted at all, and the book of promise is stuck in a frame, would disintegrate on touch, is stuck in the mud and in the past, or plays a cruel game on the viewer in search of a fore-edge.
An essential emptiness is what Thumbsucker seeks to find, but the promise of wanting something more makes it undeniably full.
Christine D’Onofrio
