Amsterdam-based Dutch artist Karin van Dam (b. 1959, Eindhoven) and Toronto-based Canadian artist Ed Pien (b. 1958, Taipei) first met in the late 1990s during a Paris residency and have been collaborating regularly over the past three decades. Drawn from Water is a presentation of van Dam and Pien’s recent investigations of water not only as a source of vitality, mystery, and enchantment, but also as a co-creator in their individual and collaborative practices. The centrepiece of the exhibition is Surfacing, a new site-specific installation that engages with the complex natural and social histories of the local Sumas Lake and its surroundings. Surfacing is presented in dialogue with a selection of recent fibre sculptures and installations, as well as prints, drawings, and photographs, including some inspired by their 2017 trip across Canada together.
Van Dam’s works on paper, large fibre sculptures, and immersive installations are made of a wide range of organic and industrial materials, often used in surprising combinations. The manual labour of knitting or drawing is, for van Dam, a process of searching for the point of equilibrium between order and chaos. In his works on paper and interactive multimedia installations, Pien celebrates pluriversality and attempts to champion those actors that have less autonomy, agency, and voice. (Under)water worlds have been particularly seductive to Pien, who often imbues them in his work with fantastical qualities.
Although their individual artistic practices are characterized by a distinct set of processes, techniques, and influences, the two multidisciplinary artists share an aesthetic sensibility underpinned by a deep investment in heightened awareness and embodied knowledge of natural and built environments, a strong desire to complicate perceptions of the relationships between human and non-human actors as hierarchical, and an attitude of wonder towards the unknown, uncontrollable, and potentially unknowable.
This exhibition is generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.
Knit works by Karin van Dam were produced in the TextielLab in Tilburg, the Netherlands, with support from the Mondriaan Fund.
View Program Guide
