O'Born Contemporary

Exhibition

luminous

Group Exhibition

January 15 – April 20, 2010

* The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter

To regard the frost and the boughs

Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time

To behold the junipers shagged with ice,

The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think

Of any misery in the sound of the wind,

In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land

Full of the same wind

That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,

And, nothing himself, beholds

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

– Wallace Stevens, 1921

statement

Join us for luminous, an exhibition of glorious photographs that exemplify both the sublime hopes of a new year and the contemplation of deep, dark spells cast upon us by winter. The artists in luminous use archaic and contemporary processes alike to make images that glow from within a darkness, burning embers in the gloom of night. Curtis Wehrfritz' rare 8×10 Daguerrotypes nudge at epic narratives that linger deep in the Canadian psyche, Susan Burnstine uses handmade pinhole cameras to capture fragments of distorted realities visited upon her when sleeping, Lou Raizin's digital photographs record a stark landscape in which nature itself subsumes colour, Michael Mazzeo's delicate ambrotype portraits are beauty, personified. Together their works give breath and life to "the listener, who listens in the snow... beholds Nothing that is not there, and the nothing that is" *.

- P Elaine Sharpe – January 2010