Created between 1995 and 1998, this three-part body of work - "Archive", "Volcano" and "Garden" - was shown in several locations in Toronto in the exhibitions Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso in collaboration with the yellowhat collective. Selected pieces were shown at Angell Gallery, Toronto.
"Archive", installed on the face of a fireplace, consists of images and a stack of inaccessible books, journals and boxed objects representing a period of twenty-five years of the artist's research into the Italian poet's text. Partially obscured images of hands in the artist's daily life in Italy are suspended above Dante's Inferno text in the original terza rima, as well as in translation, on page-size supports. Ash from a contemporary "bonfire of the vanities" coats all the surfaces as pigment, loose and bound in wax or latex.
"Volcano" is an analogue of Mount Purgatory. It consists of seven double-sided encaustic coated doors spilling down a wall onto the floor. Marble dust, ash, burnt wood, and red pigment colour surfaces vary from smooth to rough to scorched and back again.
"Garden" begins with a darkened ivory-coloured antechamber. Two spot-lit marble and wax plinths each bear a cushion carrying a resolved or dissolved form. Next, a main chamber, flooded with light, contains a freestanding curved wall constructed of six double-sided hinged marble and wax doors, towards which the viewer swings on an ivory satin seat. The private garden wall of R. L. Stevenson's swing poem links childhood memory and fantasy to the death of a parent.
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