LINEs OF FLIGHT: from above – Opening March 14

Andrew Maize, Lou Sheppard, and Shaheer Tarar

Join us for the Opening Reception, Thursday March 14, at 8pm.
On view March 14–April 20, 2019
Mini-residency period: February 28–March 14, 2019
Curated by David LaRiviere, Artistic Director, PAVED Arts

Andrew Maize, Lou Sheppard, and Shaheer Tarar examine, in their own way, how meaning is changed through shifting aerial perspectives. Each artist will have access to the PAVED Arts production centre and opportunity to collaborate during their residency time in Saskatoon.

Andrew Maize explores early panoramic and aerial photographic technologies though using both kites and balloons to expand human vision and surveillance. As part of a new work for this exhibition, Maize will be flying a kite attached with a 360° camera above the gallery, and it’s imagery will be featured on the outdoor billboard space.

Lou Sheppard‘s Saskatchewan Song Cycle works with satellite maps of Saskatoon area in order to create a series of graphic scores, which will then be interpreted through vocal performance and presented as an installation.

Shaheer Tarar has developed a three-channel film that uses satellite images to document the siege of Kobanî in Syria, the migration it provoked, and how the city’s proximity to a border affected both militants and migrants. His practice concerns the infrastructures of migrant containment and detention, as well as the ways in which aerial images are mobilized in support of these systems.

LINEs of FLIGHT:
In their seminal work A Thousand Plateaus, philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari develop the concept of a Line of Flight as a partial account for how organisms (any living organization or body) manage to, under certain conditions, escape the limitations of identity and territory. One of three tendencies in relation to this process, a Line of Flight constitutes a radical departure, one that breaks with territory in a way that changes the very composition of a given assemblage, thus entering new territory and becoming truly different. The Line of Flight does not return to an ordinal sense of “identity,” rather the departure establishes new connections that can not be fully anticipated.

As such, the works exhibited in this exhibition are experimental to the extent that methodology and social/political attitudes remain open to encounters with other artists and the broader community. Each artist introduces relevant problematics: dynamic and responsive questions that become manifest through an encounter with the space and the community at large. LINEs OF FLIGHT enables projects that work with the material of a situation, while bringing to bear the peculiar and idiosyncratic sensibilities of each artist and their project.

Related Events:

February 28-March 14, 2019
LINEs OF FLIGHT: from above artist-in-residence period

Thursday, March 14th at noon
LINEs OF FLIGHT: from above Panel Discussion
Gordon Snelgrove Gallery, Murray Building, 3 Campus Dr #191, Saskatoon, SK
Featuring Andrew Maize, Lou Sheppard and Shaheer Tarar, moderated by program curator David LaRiviere. Presented in partnership with Gordon Snelgrove Gallery and PAVED Arts.