Friday, January 20, 2012

exquisite corpse


This is my latest piece, done in collaboration with artists Claude-Aimee Villeneuve and Joanne Kielo. We are exhibiting at Galerie Ouest and our vernissage is tonight. The show is called Exquisite Corpse.

In the 1920's, the Surrealists developed a game that involved creating a collage of words or pictures. It was played with several people, each of whom wrote a phrase or drew an image on a sheet of paper, then folded it to conceal what they created and passed it on to the next person, who added their contribution. Only at the end of the game was the whole poem or creation revealed. The name Cadavre Exquis or Exquisite Corpse was taken from the first phrase that was generated by this game: "The exquisite corpse--shall drink--the young wine".

The concept of this show was similar. Three artists team up. Each artist chooses a section of the body and creates a piece independently of the other two collaborators. We then meet to reveal our pieces to one another and to connect our works to create a single piece.

My section of the torso was highly personal and reflects how I was feeling after the death of my father this summer. Scroll down for some detail shots.