woocommerce-shipping-per-product domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /var/www/staging.esse.ca/htdocs/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6131complianz-gdpr domain was triggered too early. This is usually an indicator for some code in the plugin or theme running too early. Translations should be loaded at the init action or later. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 6.7.0.) in /var/www/staging.esse.ca/htdocs/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6131For its contribution to this year\u2019s CONTACT Photography Festival, the University of Toronto Art Centre took on the challenge of surveying the past forty years of Suzy Lake\u2019s prolific output in both film and photography. Taking stock of an \u201cunderappreciated\u201d aspect of Lake\u2019s practice \u2014 her use of formal aesthetics to communicate political content \u2014 Political Poetics <\/em>focuses on the relationship between figure and ground in the celebrated performance artist\u2019s work. <\/pre>\n\n\n\nA concept put forth by cultural theorist Marshall McLuhan to explain the relationship between a medium (the figure) and its social context (the ground), the figure-ground model also served as the theme for this year\u2019s city-wide festival. In Lake\u2019s exhibition, curated by Matt Brower and Carla Garnet, the concept is mapped (sometimes unsuccessfully) onto the connection between image and identity in the artist\u2019s practice. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is rich ground to investigate Lake\u2019s work, as the show\u2019s earliest pieces make clear. Employing the minimalist aesthetic associated with conceptual performance work, Lake\u2019s projects often focus on the figure of the artist as she struggles with, or against, the ground of her environment. In Choreographies on the Dotted Line <\/em>(1976), for instance, a projected black and white video shows Lake on the floor, rolling herself into a long white sheet marked with a dotted black line. Panting with the exertion of making precise movements without the use of her limbs, Lake forces her body to stay in line with the predetermined dots. Nearby, a grid of black and white photographs also shows Lake rolling and falling, this time down a flight of stairs in Vertical Pull <\/em>(1977). Using sequential images as an extended stop- motion animation, the three columns of photographs show Lake being pulled towards the bottom of the picture plane by a rope tied around her waist. In both works, Lake adheres to arbitrary and potentially danger-ous rules about how she manipulates her body, to comment on issues of embodiment and subjectivity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But while these early performances employ the lone figure of the artist as a central trope, Lake\u2019s photographic works are more nuanced, treating identity as cultural text. This is evinced by the room dedicated to several iterations of her 1972\u201375 On Stage <\/em>series, which combines eighty-four photographs and texts that meditate on role-playing and self- projection, and as durational performance, made clear through her most recent project, Extended Breathing <\/em>(2008\u2013present), which uses hour-long exposures to blurrily depict the artist\u2019s act of breathing while standing in lush garden landscapes. Here, the artist\u2019s experiments with embodi-ment hone in on photography\u2019s capacities and limitations as a medium, attempting to depict ongoing processes through single, still images. Taken together, Lake\u2019s sustained engagements with photography exceed their curatorial frame, offering subtle surprises for viewers. Above all, the exhibition attests to the need for further curatorial investigations into the breadth and diversity of her work. <\/p>\n\n\n