Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery · Galerie Canadienne de la Céramique et du Verre
25 Caroline Street North · Waterloo ·
Ontario · N2L 2Y5
Tel.: 519.746.1882 · Fax: 519.746.6396
WATERLOO (Ontario) CANADA February 14, 2005: Tessellated Anamnesis – Patterns for Unforgetting by installation artist Christian Bernard Singer will open Sunday, March 20th from 2-5pm, with an artist’s talk at 1pm, at the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery. Singer’s living landscape-environments evoke impressions of something intangible yet intuitively familiar as they turn on notions of interior/exterior space and place, belonging, memory and time passing. The exhibit will continue to May 18th.
In Baroque Dance Installation III – Chaconne de Paeton, Singer continues his ongoing series of “dance installations" based
on notations of French court dances of the Baroque period, first developed
by Raoul-Auger Feuillet (1660-1730). Loosely
based on the myth of Phaeton, the installation conveys Feuillet’s notations
of the “Chaconne de Paeton” by Guillaume Louis Pecour (1653-1729). Unfired,
wet clay is overlaid on living mosses while a decelerated and silent video
of the dance will be projected onto a wall. Daniel Gariepy (of
La Belle Danse), who performs in the video, will give a live demonstration
of the dance at the opening.
Enclosure III This site-specific installation will contain a landscape of sculpted mosses melding with moss-like glass sculptures derived from partial body casts. Viewers will be able to inhale the elemental scents of the mosses through ventilation openings of its terrarium-like enclosure.
“I want my installations to exist as a form of living theatre,” says Singer. “I want you to smell the moss, and respond physically, emotionally, and metaphysically with your body to the environment, feeling the life force that exists within you. Nature makes it glaringly obvious to me that my time here is finite and I respond by celebrating life.”
Born in 1962 in Paris, France, Christian Bernard Singer began as company dancer with Laura Foreman’s Composers and Choreographers Theater in New York City. He received his MFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, and an Associate from the Ontario College of Art and Design. Singer creates installation-environments that incorporate living plant life, bronze, glass, ceramic, found objects, and video. Recent exhibitions and projects include: The Fish Tank Gallery, New York; Art System Gallery and The Simcoe Gallery, Toronto; Un Printemps Bizarre Festival, Paris; Artsite, Wellsville, NY; and The Gordon Center, Nashville, TN. He lives and works in Toronto.
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The Canadian Clay & Glass Gallery fosters interaction among artworks, artists and community and is recognized nationally for its critically acclaimed exhibitions of local, national and international artists. The CCGG offers lectures, conferences, classes, workshops, tours, and houses a specialized library, archive and research centre. Since 1993, it has been home to an extensive and ever-expanding collection of historical and contemporary Canadian ceramic, glass and enamel art, conserving and promoting a rich and active component of Canada’s rich cultural heritage.
The gallery is located at 25 Caroline Street North in Waterloo, Ontario and is open Tuesday to Saturday, from 10 am to 5 pm, and Sundays 1 to 5 pm. Admission is by donation, free for members.
*Anamnesis (the opposite of amnesia): the ability to recall past occurrences, from the Greek – “ the undoing of our forgetting” - to remember or recollect.
For additional information on these or any other gallery programs, call Kate Holt, Marketing Manager at 519.746.1882, Ext. 234 or email kate@canadianclayandglass.ca or visit www.canadianclayandglass.ca