PENELOPE STEWART
VANITAS
Exhibition
Koffler Gallery, 2014
Photo documentation by Toni Hafkenscheid
Responsiveness to space and engagement with its particular architecture, setting, history and ideologies are central to the practice of Toronto artist Penelope Stewart. Working across the media of sculpture, installation, photography, printmaking and architectural intervention, she offers deeply sensorial encounters, whether by staging large-scale beeswax environments or trompe l’oeil photographs.
For the Koffler Gallery, Stewart creates a site-specific installation that continues her exploration of the rich metaphoric and historic associations of the beehive as democratic model and utopian symbol, particularly for Modernist thinkers. Taking her practice in new directions, Stewart expands her beeswax work three-dimensionally and transforms the gallery space into an immersive architecture.
Wax-cast bee skeps (man-made straw beehives) lead the way to a monumental hive covered in a grid of large tiles. The structure alludes simultaneously to Le Corbusier’s Unité d’habitation and to the rational beehive box used in apiaries. Other household objects and discarded materials frame and direct sightlines toward the centerpiece.
Inside, sculptural beeswax layers overflow the surfaces of the hive in a baroque abundance. Loaded with hybrid forms integrating both floral elements and manufactured objects, a mysterious forensic geology disrupts and extends the interior, causing an outward spill. Beeswax vines hang from the top of the hive and from the ceiling, spreading into the gallery. The dense overgrowth builds up around the exterior, melding with domestic debris.
Fixed in the mnemonic stillness of beeswax, the scene seems caught between destruction and regeneration, equally instilling a sense of loss and expectation. The luscious excess coalesces into a grand still life – a vanitas – a modern ruin reminding us of the life and death cycle, the ephemeral nature of all things, and the fragility of our utopian aspirations of transforming nature through culture.
Inside, sculptural beeswax layers overflow the surfaces of the hive in a baroque abundance. Loaded with hybrid forms integrating both floral elements and manufactured objects, a mysterious forensic geology disrupts and extends the interior, causing an outward spill. Beeswax vines hang from the top of the hive and from the ceiling, spreading into the gallery. The dense overgrowth builds up around the exterior, melding with domestic debris.
Fixed in the mnemonic stillness of beeswax, the scene seems caught between destruction and regeneration, equally instilling a sense of loss and expectation. The luscious excess coalesces into a grand still life – a vanitas – a modern ruin reminding us of the life and death cycle, the ephemeral nature of all things, and the fragility of our utopian aspirations of transforming nature through culture.
Artist Info
Born in Montréal, Québec, Penelope Stewart is a site-sensitive installation artist working across the varied media of sculpture, installation, photography, printmaking and architectural interventions. Central to her practice is an engagement with space and place; its architecture, history, politics, ideology and environment. Whether it is her large scale beeswax architectures or her trompe l’oeil photographs, Stewart brings a sensory intensification, a haptic quality to the encounter.
Stewart received an MFA from the State University of New York and in 2010 was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts (RCA). Her work has been exhibited at such notable institutions as Ganna Walska Lotusland, California; The Albright-Knox Art Gallery, New York; Musée d’Art de Joliette, Québec; Musée Barthétè, Boussan, France; Oakville Galleries, Ontario; Tom Thomson Art Gallery, Ontario; ACT Design Museum Canberra, Australia; Poimena Gallery, Launceston, Tasmania, Australia.
