Serpentine Rhythm

Laura Piasta

September 7 to October 6, 2018

Dear L,

I’ve also been thinking about snakes. Absently, I find myself drawing them—

To loop. To coil.

—picturing their perfect funnelling, my imperfect lines.

Somewhere they have my attention. There is something there.

It’s not enough to just apply the ouroboros; neither Tiresias’ strike, his/her blindness, or his/her/his (growing and shrinking) breasts; nor my mother’s acute fear; nor psychoanalysis’ tiresome assertions, for example. No, somewhat traceable here, but beyond and through.

So now I am in the desert. You got me here. Lofty sky.

Thinking heat. Thinking of rocks, of a landscape resembling a snake’s hide; coming to be called for it, in fact.

To be like the serpent.

I am thinking of geology—pressure and time—incubating conditions.

And I think of the baby.

Not the baby’s booties this time, but your nipple cast in bronze. And of the body and skin. And now of patina.

And of how the snake moves

for us.

Love,

k


The work of Laura Piasta considers the agency of objects through a conceptual exploration of their materiality. Based in Vancouver, Piasta received her BFA from the Emily Carr University of Art and Design in 2006 and an MFA from the Umeå Academy of Fine Arts in Sweden in 2012. Her work has been exhibited at a number of institutions and galleries in Europe and North America including Bildmuseet (Sweden), Auto Centre (Berlin), Romeo (New York), Malmö Show Room (Sweden), The Charles H. Scott Gallery and The Contemporary Art Gallery (both Vancouver). Recent solo shows in Vancouver include A Definite Volume but No Fixed State at BAF, Sounding the Ultraviolet at Access Gallery and Bog Breath at Sunset Terrace. She has been an artist in residence at Fabrikken for Kunst og Design (Copenhagen), Sikås Art Center (Sweden), The Burrard Arts Foundation (Vancouver) and the Banff Centre.

Katrina Niebergal is an interdisciplinary artist working primarily in sculpture and installation. Her practice is centrally concerned with feeling. She questions how intimate, fleeting experience might be distilled into form and how form might be made to transmit affect. She is currently studying in the Master of Artistic Research program at the Royal Academy of Art, Den Haag, The Netherlands. She received her BFA in Visual Arts from Emily Carr University of Art + Design in 2013 and was a co-founder of Sunset Terrace and Duplex, shared artist-run studio and exhibition spaces in Vancouver.