Indeterminate Limits

Indeterminate Limits brings together five artists from the Canadian prairies whose iterative practices blur the lines between figurative and abstract art. Featuring video, photography, painting, mixed media and craft, the exhibition involves artworks from diverse selection of mediums which are created with similar modes of production. Indeterminate Limits considers labour and creation as one and the same; the works come together through intuitive processes and experimental techniques. Each artist has developed personal and specific visual language that reflects their lived experiences while working within traditions of abstraction that often deemphasize the personal or political.

In math, an indeterminate limit occurs when a set of functions approaches a limit and advances infinitely, never meeting it. Some examples of this would be zero divided by zero, or one to the power of infinity. Even as the expression approaches its limit, changes occur as it inches closer to that value. The same can be said for these artists, working in the spaces between figurative and abstract art. As they overlay marks and media, using figurative works as raw materials in their pieces, they approach the aesthetic infinity of the non-representational. Their artworks also point to a future that is undetermined and without limits. They ask the question: in a world full of possibilities, why do we continue to go down the same paths that we have been traversing for so long? Why don’t we push towards an undetermined and more empathetic future?

Presented with the support of the Government of Canada through the Young Canada Works program, Building Careers in Heritage.