“We live in an age of surfaces. Oscar Wilde’s character made this remark over a century ago, but for UW fine arts professor Robert Linsley, nothing could be truer of our own time--and nothing more compelling to study.” – Angela Roorda, University of Waterloo
This November, Professor Robert Linsley, will come to Modern Fuel to present a talk on Abstraction in conjunction with our current exhibition, Soft Abs, an exhibit of abstract painting. Linsley’s presentation is part of a series of artist talks Modern Fuel offers which complements its programming and attempts to further connect its community to current issues in contemporary art.
Like other abstract painters, Linsley holds a long-standing fascination with both the limits and possibilities of surfaces, particularly the surface of the canvas. How much information can a canvas bear? And can the two dimensional picture plane sometimes say as much as the three dimensional figures it is typically called upon to represent? Contemporary physicists are also interested in such questions and Linsley is one of the first to point out and, in a rigourous way, investigate the shared artistic and scientific concern with surfaces. While drawing upon recent discoveries in theoretical physics, Linsley goes beyond simply illustrating scientific concepts in his work. Instead, his aim is to initiate a fruitful dialogue between artists and physicists in order to “find a common conceptual ground between the two activities.” Linsley is the initiator of the New Models in Abstraction research group and his work and the work of his research fellows can be found at http://abstraction.uwaterloo.ca
For further information, contact:
Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre
21A Queen St, Kingston, ON, K7K 1A1
(613) 548-4883
modernfuel@bellnet.ca