Exhibition: Nov 16 – Dec 16, 2017
Hours: Tue – Sat, noon to 5 pm
Wil Aballe Art Projects | WAAP
688 East Hastings St. (lower level)
Vancouver, BC V6A 1R1

For preview, press inquiries or sales inquiries, contact 778 229 3458 or
wil@waapart.com.

You have made your way from worm to man, and much in you is still worm.
“Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Prologue)

The light we see from the sun is from 8 minutes ago. Light is the result of antimatter
produced in the heart of the sun, and its annihilation. We will never be able to see
the edges of the universe, as they are fourteen billion years away. All of these
cosmic musings are mediated knowledge, not gleaned from direct human
experience.

How to make something approaching sacred paintings today, and why would
someone want to bother? Intuition pointed to ancient emblems and alchemical
illustrations. The hand-of-God motif is a stand-in for the human hand, playing God.
Building apparatuses devised to extract the hidden potentialities at the seat of
matter. Under the sign of stockpiling capital, devouring humans drove the sacred
away. What direction might we want to go in light of looming extinction?

The matter we see around us is what is left over from billions of years of creation-
annihilation, energy passed between fermion and boson, and other elemental and
energy states known and unknown. Matter is congealed energy. When matter first
formed, it left a negative imprint ” antimatter. When matter and antimatter collide,
they release exorbitant energy. There is very little antimatter accessible to humans
as things stand, most of it having been used up, leaving behind stray matter. How to
wrap ones head around such physical concepts? Begin with a void, proceed blindly,
with little understanding of where things will go, figure out a transformative process
in reaction to materials, let things accrete slowly, witness materials assembling,
interpenetrating and congealing, such as bitumen and red iron oxide into plastic.

**Many thanks to Randy Lee Cutler and Ingrid Koenig for spearheading the
collaborative project between artists and physicists as part of their Leaning out of
Windows research project (SSHRC), of which this project is a part, and to the
physicists at TRIUMF UBC, especially Carla Babcock, for sharing their knowledge.
Thanks also to Barbara Atwell and Richard Prince for material assistance, and to
Allison Hrabluik, Lyse Lemieux, and Al McWilliams for the conversations in the
studio.