The World May Be Post-dated

"Dictions" - an exhibition of work by Jen Macklem, curated by Ihor Holibizky. Dictions travelled in 2003/2004 in a show called the world may be post-dated to the University of Waterloo Art Gallery, Galerie d'Art de l'Université du Québec á Montréal, and the Maclaren Arts Center in Barrie, Ontario.

The intuitive channeling is Macklem's personal, visual vocabulary, and serves other mysteries of our existence.. The play of words and meandering drawing is evident in her multi-element, wall-mounted "dictions"installation. In the vertical, cascading element, there are cast medallions dangling at the ends of ambulatory steel lines - a face, a boot, a bird's head - and a hand cranked mechanical-movement component. There are complementary word-diction elements: one reads "maybe" and "I dunno", balanced at opposite ends of a twisting steel rod. These phrases are often twinned, said in the same breath, a double punctuation and not necessarily indecision. Macklem has a very physical (and intuitive) relationship to materials and how these sculptural works are realized. The concentric, circular "dictions" element can be spun on a central axle, and the words are cast in coloured resin against the steel support. The transparency of the resin gives it the appearance and quality of a 3-dimensional watercolour, but also - as she noted - a way of physically making a word.

Concurrently, Macklem continues a journal of drawings where the animal and human world, maps and diagrams morph into an organic codex. A recurring leitmotif is a Laocoon-like maze. In some works on paper, this has been expressed as an aerial view city map, and in one instance, with manholes as coloured dots, as if openings to the underworld. In other works, the maze is transformed into a science-instructional atomic model diagram, a sign of the future as it was seen in the 1950's. Amoebic shapes also make frequent appearances: "headshot" is also amoebic-like. There is a geological reference in her handling of watercolours, the layers of transparent staining as strata. There are, naturally, human inhabitants of this post- dated world, misbehaving: one emerges from a subterranean hole; a cap- wearing head has blue smoke-speech bubbles coming out of his ears; a tethered balloon head sticks its spire-point nose into the mouth of another balloon head. These are not mere excercises in the imagination running wild, there is a connective thread, a logic of its own presence.

Ihor Holubizky, exerpted from the exhibition catalogue, 2003

d--rift, 2003-04

Cascade, metal, 2003-04