Winter exhibitions: Kapwani Kiwanga and DaveandJenn

Esker Foundation is proud to announce our 2018 winter exhibition season: presenting a major solo exhibition by Canadian-born, Paris-based artist Kapwani Kiwanga, and a fantastical site-specific installation by Calgary-based collaborators DaveandJenn.

Kapwani Kiwanga
A wall is just a wall (and nothing more at all)
February 3–May 6, 2018
As we go about our daily lives, we enter into and are confronted by spaces designed to shape and regulate our behaviour, whether we notice it or not. In A wall is just a wall (and nothing more at all), Kapwani Kiwanga explores disciplinary architecture and design by isolating the structural traits and intended psychological effects of different built environments, such as prisons, hospitals, and mental health facilities.

The exhibition brings together recent and newly commissioned works, including the re-staging of the colour and light installation pink-blue, the video work A Primer, and the 2-channel sound installation, 500 ft. For the installation at Esker Foundation, Kiwanga has created several major new sculptural works, based on her ongoing research into institutional architecture and design, and on research on local histories and the architecture of Calgary and Alberta hospitals and psychiatric facilities.

The exhibition title A wall is just a wall (and nothing more at all) is drawn from the poem “Affirmation” by Assata Shakur, a civil rights revolutionary and former member of the Black Liberation Army, which calls for resistance against structures of inequity and the modes of segregation that exist all around us. The works in this exhibition highlight the potential for built environments to predict and affect human behaviour in the subtlest and most forceful of ways.

Kapwani Kiwanga: A wall is just a wall (and nothing more at all) is organized and circulated by The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto. The exhibition is curated by Nabila Abdel Nabi, Assistant Curator, The Power Plant. It was sponsored by TD Bank Group. A Primer is co-produced by The Power Plant, Toronto and the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, University of Chicago.

Support for the development and production of new works for the exhibition provided by Esker Foundation.

Film series
Building on concepts explored in A wall is just a wall (and nothing more at all), Kapwani Kiwanga has curated a program of three videos to accompany the exhibition: Anri Sala’s Dammi i Colori, Gordon Matta-Clark’s City Slivers, and John Smith’s Hackney Marshes – November 4, 1977. Each video will be screened in our mezzanine gallery for the duration of a month. The film series provides an opportunity to consider different artistic perspectives on our collective and divergent experiences of architecture, design, and urban planning.

DaveandJenn
Paradise for an in-between time
January 29–April 29, 2018
DaveandJenn began their collaborative practice as painters, known for creating multi-layered and detailed resin paintings. The painted imagery in these works float, suspended in between each epoxy layer, so that it can catch the light and create shifting shadows that fall onto the layers below. Their recent sculptural and installation works can be seen as an extension of this painting practice. The interplay between the light, shadows, and reflections within the earlier resin works led to an imaginative exploration of what it would be like to peel apart the epoxy layers and make a painting that someone could walk into.

Paradise for an in-between time brings us back to the forest, a landscape often depicted in their earlier work. However, this forest is a mirage; a heartache; an exercise in resilience; as well as a party for the end of the world. It is filled with light, shadows, and reflections layered together to recreate something that is lost and, perhaps, not yet found.

DaveandJenn is the name that artists David John Foy and Jennifer Saleik have worked under as collaborators since 2004. Experimenting with form and materials is an important aspect of their work, which includes painting, sculpture, installation, animation, and digital video.

About Esker Foundation
Esker Foundation is a privately funded contemporary art gallery located in Calgary, Canada. Esker Foundation connects the public to contemporary art through relevant, accessible, and educational exhibitions, programs, and publications. Esker Foundation reflects on current developments in local, regional, and international culture; creates opportunities for public dialogue; and supports the production of ground-breaking new work, ideas, and research. Founded in 2012 by Jim and Susan Hill, Esker Foundation is a new model for institutional relevance, curatorial focus, and audience engagement. Admission is free.

For a digital companion to all the exhibitions, the Esker Foundation App can be downloaded for free at either App Store or Google Play.

Further information: www.eskerfoundation.com

View and download the winter brochure

Press contact
Esker Foundation, T 1 403 930 2499 / jhenderson [​at​] eskerfoundation.com