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ARTSCE1 Phone: 905-845-3824 (ext. 5559) Fax: 905-337-5567 e-mail: rjerred@haltonsearch.com Peter C. McCusker · Oakville Beaver Artist's message lies in her methods By Craig MacBride S i'l l I.U.TO TlII HI-.WI.K tused. Karilee Fuglem's show, many things were left unsaid, doesn't till the Gairloch house physically - it leaves a lot of open spaces - hul it does fill the house wilh ideas. Fuglem was al ihe house on Sunday to talk about her past work and her current show, and though she did explain her meth ods. she didn't delve very deeply into the meaning. She did. however, hint that much of the meaning was evident in ihe methods used. During a slideshow preceding a guided tour of the gallery. Fuglem shared some of her most intriguing installations. Fresh out of university and living in a Montreal apartment, she made sculptures out of masking tape. These sculptures looked a lot like cocoons, and they were made with the sticky side of the masking tape on the surface. Fuglem would stick these to a comer wall of her apartment until the tape's stickiness wore off and the cocoon fell to the ground. Upon falling, ihe cocoon would deni and eventually collapse, but it would be left on the lloor. replaced on the wall by a fresh sticky masking tape cocoon. Al an apartment exhibition in Montreal not long after creating the cocoons, Fuglem filled the better part of a room w ith packing tape, unraveling rolls of il and letting it reside as an odd blob. "I keep trying to gel at something I can't explain." Fuglem said, later admitting that unraveling entire rolls of tape was to expe rience the passing of time. To unravel those rolls relatively quickly ihough. would be to experience time pass ing relatively quickly, and as Fuglem took the audience through slides of her work, there was a sense that she does have issues with time and how it is used. In one show, she put "bits of bubblegum stuck together in a mass in this beautiful glass case." Many pieces of gum in the case remained in mid-bubble. "They would keep relentlessly try ing to keep that breath." Along with time, air and breath are also obsessions that Fuglem deals with in her art. Her breathing wall was the piece that brought her prominence. Brushing latex onto material 10 feet high and 1 5 feet wide, and then attaching that material to a wall with limed fans behind ii. Fuglem made Ihe wall look as if il was breathing. The breathing wall, along with other examples of her work shown during her talk, showed inanimate objects as having a life. Her three "tongue slugs" - at five, six and eight feet respectively, laid on a while platform, lit from beneath by fluorescent lights and manipulated by timed fans breathed like science fiction hibernation pods. or. as Fuglem put il. "tongue slugs." "1 was trying to make things that weren'l exactly like anything but kind of like something," Fuglem said. She then U x > k the audience on a tour of ihe Gairloch house gallery, showing her current exhibition. The first room that we A new exhibition at the Oakville Galleries Gairloch Gardens loca tion may Heave some viewers con Glen Thiessen · Oakville Beaver Glen Thiessen · Oakville Beaver Glen Thiessen · Oakville Beaver Barrie Erskine · Oakville Beaver Last week, Oakville Beaver photographers were allowed access to artist Karilee Fulgem as she created two of the three pieces of her current exhibition many things were left unsaid at the Oakville Galleries at Gairloch G ardens. (Top) Fulgem groups together thousands of invisible threads to create Untitled (invis ible thread). (Below) Fulgent combines acetate discs, glass beads, nylon thread, fans, and tim ers to make whatever they said also had this quality (there is a coher ence in things). The artist (left) pauses to observe her work and (immediate above) puts finishing touches on the invisible threads. The finished products (left above) Untitled (invisible thread) and (right above) whatever they said also had this quality (there is a coherence in things). Peter C. McCusker · Oakville Beaver walked through was magical. There were a group of fans on the floor, all of them on timers, and wires attached from them to the ceiling. On the wires were clear disks, one inch wide. As ihe fans started, the d is k s would either slide up Ihe wires and shudder or sim ply shake in place. Al first, with the army of 1 5 fans on the floor, the piece looks awk ward. but if you sil in place and watch for the fans to go off. the piece becomes much more interesting. Fuglem said that there is "a conversa tional feel when you listen to it for a while. You get responses and lulls in conversa tion." You feel a sense of loss when llic fans slop blowing and the disks stop clicking. It's like having a crush on a person and then having that person leave the room. There's a definite emptiness, but when those fans come back on and blow ihe disks into the air again, the crush has relumed and your life - the life of this piece of art - is again full and exciting. In ihe middle room of the Gairloch gallery, there is a circular metal frame standing a couple of inches off of ihe floor Stretched across the frame there is material with clouds silkscreened onto it. and in ihe comer stands a lone fan. blowing at the frame and making nearly imperceptible rip ples flow along the fabric. Standing above this two-feel wide piece, you feel as if you're looking down at Ihe clouds, like God or a passenger in a plane. And in the final room of the house, there is a cloud. It's not a real cloud, but that is (he first imagine that will come to mind when you see it. Fuglem strung up thin threads of monofilament wire at one end of the room, attaching it to the walls. The threads, though virtually invisible if only in one strand, take on an interesting texture when tangled togeiher in a large form. The cloud looks as if it isn't really there, and many people in the audience ended up behind the cloud, circling it to see if they could get a belter understanding of the piece. `This is really horrible stuff, and it s awful to work with." Fuglem said of the tough, invisible thread, "but that it can become an organic thing with so much presence. I love that." There is one more element to the show that is easily missed, but is of importance. Throughout the house, in all three rooms of the gallery, there is text on the walls. The glossy white letters on the white walls of the gallery are nearly impossible to see, and to read each snippet of text you have to lean down and make out the words letter by let ter. leaning and crouching lo gel the proper light. The text is from Virginia Woolfs To the Lighthouse, and most of the quotations are questions. " When I first came to this house, 1was stmck by how much it reminded me of Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, and this house was built around the same time." And just like her show, Fuglem said, "in the book there's a lot of questioning." Karilee Fuglem's many things were left unsaid runs until Apr. 6 at Oakville Galleries. Gairloch Gardens at 1306 Lakeshore Rd. E. Gallery hours are I - 5 p.m. Tuesday to Sunday. Admission is free. Now Playing on Cogeco P Spend with an international man C O G I E C O * D igrtalTV video on Demand: Austin Powers in Goldmember Available* w here technology permits S o m e restrictions apply