Not of, but in, and for.

Collages by Les Ramsay and Allison Tweedie.

Opening reception February 5, 8 pm
February 6-March 10

The space of collage, as both process and product, is a space of, and for, inclusion: its language is at once controlled and infinitely variable, in and of time.

In combination, and re-combination, this space of inclusion, with its uncanny juxtapositions of objects and subjects within material connections, is activated as if by magic; presenting itself not only as the careful experimentations of alchemy in the transformation of common materials to rare objects, or the momentary seductions of sensory perception enabled by mirror tricks and sleight of hand, but common to these, the productive confusions and double-entendres of simultaneity.

Many of Allison Tweedie’s collages begin as extractions of individual images from the repetitious format of an instructional book on gardening and lawn maintenance. Focusing on the isolated repetition of consecutive documents, images of re-appearing formal elements and recurring methodical gestures within these constructed landscapes are re-assembled in collage as surreal manifestations of double visions.

The repetition of the deceptively simple triangular forms of Les Ramsay’s work from a long stay in Berlin appear as perfected formulas of his earlier collages from a longer stay in Spain, but his use of newspapers and fake finish materials, cardboard backings and cigarette foil, reflect an historical engagement: a lineage of informed provocations and imitated tomfoolery.

Historically new, and still very much tied to the situations of its creation, collage is not necessarily used for representation, but for re-presentation. As always already a natural and unlikely interaction, it has been suggested that the ambiguities inherent in this type of negotiation multiply questioning of what is, what was, and what might be.