Not a field, a feeling.

John Burgess, Henry Murphy, Daniel Oates-Kuhn, Emiliano Sepulveda

Opening reception Friday, January 15, 8 pm
January 16-31

Taking its title from a pair of essays, written on sculpture and photography at crisis points in the definition of these media, and intersecting in the space of the document, Not a field, a feeling presents the work of John Burgess, Henry Murphy, Daniel Oates-Kuhn, and Emiliano Sepulveda, as shifting points of reference within these overlapping, expanding fields: the spaces of physical experience, construction and documentation, and the grounds of intellectual play, negotiation and provision.

John Burgess’s sculpture and installation works deal with specific architectures built in and around the Vancouver area. Partial, or imaginative, re-constructions are made through careful examination of photographs and elevation plans, but never transcend the only optical experience of these media, by which the architectures have been made iconic to the general public.

Henry Murphy works in the quiet tradition of photography. Self-conscious of his medium, his pictures are careful arrangements made by small steps forwards, backwards, and side to side, always focused on their final visual experience, and emotional affect.

Daniel Oates-Kuhn has made a careful documentation of specific objects that invite or inhibit gestural actions and reactions, working out a phenomenology of gaps and walls that force projection and re-distribution.

Emiliano Sepulveda’s photographic practice is more specific to the developmental processes of the enlarger, and the chemical reactions that are necessarily kept in the dark. Working out of doors, with light sensitive materials, Sepulveda collects both objects, and the light that makes these objects what they are, within a mapping strategy that could be best described as obscure.

Further reading
George Baker. “Photography’s Expanded Field,” October 114, (Fall 2005): 120-140
Rosalind Krauss. “Sculpture in the Expanded Field.” In The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Post-Modern Culture. Ed. Hal Foster. New York: The New Press, 1998.