RHONDA WEPPLER AND TREVOR MAHOVSKY | RHONDA WEPPLER, TREVOR MAHOVSKY
01.21.2006 | 03.05.2006
Rhonda Weppler and Trevor Mahovsky produce representations or alterations of everyday objects such as staples, coffee cups, flags, shopping carts and cars. Some of their works use indexical processes such as casting, tracing or embossing, to record the shape and surface characteristics of an object. Using direct means, casting from the object itself and not from molds, each object is rendered in a single material approximating its general physical character in terms of colour, opacity and reflectivity. The limits of the materials result in representations which succeed in some terms and fail in others.
Another body of work consists of monochrome-painted solid wooden blocks which function as nearly blank, minimal stand-ins, becoming surrogates or signs for objects. As more work is produced, the sculptures increasingly refer to other sculptures within the series by restating, reconfiguring or negating them through either formal repetition or arrangement, the latter being most commonly a process of stacking. Through these processes altered found objects are also integrated into the work. As the works become more intricately linked, their conceptual and representational processes unravel into formal play, visual and material jokes, art historical reference, social commentary and narrative.
For their exhibition at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Weppler and Mahovsky are constructing a life-size sailboat in the gallery space. The boat is made of fir-wood veneer coated with a layer of resin and held together by small hobby clamps on the inside. The artists present the outside of the boat only, made from actual sailboat plans. Because it is a skin without a body, it naturally collapses in on itself creating a new object with an unknown narrative. In many ways, these new interpretations of known objects are more animate than their originals, implying their own histories; but as monumental sculptures, their collapse casts them as failures. If the initial appearance of their work is a deception, it is also ultimately transparent in its structure; it is left to the viewer to decipher the slippery, transmutable nature of these familiar things.
Rhonda Weppler and Trevor Mahovsky received their MFAs from the University of British Columbia in 1998. Both have extensive solo exhibition records and have collaborated in their practice since 2003. They have recently exhibited at the Owens Art Gallery, the Or Gallery, and the Ottawa Art Gallery. Their work was featured in the Berlin/Toronto Exchange, loop-raum fur actuelle kunst, Berlin, Germany. They are represented by the Pari Nadimi Gallery in Toronto.
