Ondre and Rae

Nicole Ondre's decision to title the source of her monoprint and the monoprint itself as a single work suggests how she might like us to experience Cadmium Yellow Window, particularly as we find our bodies in-between these two related gestures.

For me, being in the midst of a work is what Michael Taussig attempted last week during his self-consciously performative lecture at SFU's Goldcorp Centre for the Arts -- a talk that tried a little too hard to merge the lyrical composition of a Walter Benjamin essay with the proprioceptive poetry of Charles Olson.

However, where Taussig's lecture eventually succumbed to its form, Nicole's activation of the physical space between source and print contributed to our appreciation of the larger exhibition, allowing After Finitude its overtone.

Back in 1997, Vancouver artist Charles Rae began a series of similarly constructed works entitled Institutions, where he painted what might be called a Benjaminian arcade on one side of the canvas, only to fold the canvas over and complete its picture in the form of a print. A crude attempt at mechanical reproduction, but a reproduction (and an "original" work of art) all the same.

The image above is a painting (oil on vinyl, diptych 43" x 81") entitled Harmonic Reverie (2000). I am not certain but I believe this work was made using the same process as the Institutions series.