This exhibition features new work from Kristiina Lahde’s on-going engagement with materials that are often overlooked such as consumer cast-offs and the everyday. In this work, Lahde employs the circle: a force that binds and brings together; a cyclical journey; or a zero that signifies nothing but always holds an important place. Her collages, photographs, and wall installation explore perceptions of negative and positive space, nothingness, and abundance, and how these notions are shaped by our imagination and our predisposition for rhythms and repetition. Repetition becomes an amplification and brings focus to Lahde’s choice of materials and forms alongside her conceptual actions and alterations. Using found or everyday objects, Lahde’s practice works in collaboration with her materials. Her intervening actions transform these materials and yet preserve, or even magnify, our ordinary experience of them.
A new series of photographs featuring rubber bands and an installation of found circular objects extract ubiquitous materials from their everyday function. Their presentation as works of art allows for a reflection of their formal qualities and an appreciation of their potential evocation of motion, paths, and cycles. This installation, as well as Lahde’s photographs of delicate paper sculptures, showcase repeating patterns of forms; one mimicking a gravitational orbit while the other reveals circular shapes through intersecting straight lines. Her intricate collages, made of thousands of paper zeros clipped from advertising flyers, take the form of sweeping spiral formations reminiscent of NASA photographs. These works call for a reflection on the symbolic, philosophical, and numerical meaning of the zero–of the circle that is both empty and taking up space.
A void, a volume, a line defining a space.
In lieu of an opening, Lahde will be available to meet visitors by appointment on Saturdays during the run of the exhibition. The gallery is open Wednesday to Saturday, noon to 6pm.
Kristiina Lahde is an artist from Toronto, Canada. Her conceptual practice focuses on material investigation and process. She received her BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 1999. Her recent solo exhibitions include Extraordinary Measures at the University of Waterloo Art Gallery, Unfolding at the Art Gallery of Hamilton, and In and Out of Order at OBORO in Montreal. She has also exhibited in Toronto at the Koffler Gallery, The Power Plant, and at La Biennale de Montréal. She was a long list nominee for the 2013 Sobey Art Award. Her works are held in several private and public collections including the Canada Council Art Bank.