Archived Exhibitions

May 28 - August 27, 2017

Calgary-based artist Jason de Haan has developed an interest in proposing and undertaking projects in which particular environments, natural conditions, and massive time scales complete, animate, and determine his multidisciplinary practice. The work most clearly deals with fleetingness, vulnerability, and the fragility of the natural world in a way that considers the limits of human perception and influence. The tangible traces of the monumental passage of time, like the interval it takes light from the most distant stars in our galaxy to reach earth – a staggering 3.8 billion years – or the polishing of a stone from thousands of years of touch, are evidence that we are merely a twinkle in a larger and longer conversation.

May 27 - August 28, 2017

The second film of Anton Vidokle’s trilogy on Russian cosmism looks at the poetic dimension of solar cosmology of Soviet biophysicist, Alexander Chizhevsky. Shot in Kazakhstan, where Chizhevsky was imprisoned and later exiled, the film introduces Сhizhevsky’s research into the impact of solar emissions on human sociology, psychology, politics and economics in the form of wars, revolutions, epidemics and other upheavals. The Communist Revolution Was Caused By The Sun aligns the life of post-soviet rural residents and the futurological projects of Russian cosmism to emphasize that the goal of the early Soviet breakthroughs aimed at the conquest of outer space was not so much technical acceleration, but the common cause of humankind in their struggle against limitations of earthly life.

January 21 - May 7, 2017

Roger Aksadjuak, Shuvinai Ashoona, Pierre Aupilardjuk, Shary Boyle, Jessie Kenalogak, John Kurok, and Leo Napayok

Organized by Shary Boyle at the invitation of Esker Foundation

Earthlings is an exhibition of visionary ceramic sculpture and works on paper, produced both individually and collaboratively, by seven contemporary artists. Otherworldly, surreal, magically figurative, and underpinned by complex narratives, the works in this exhibition are the products of a range of deeply personal practices that are informed by idiosyncratic realities and myths, real and imagined spaces, sensuality, and spirituality.

Ashoona (Cape Dorset), Boyle (Toronto), and the ceramic artists of Matchbox studio in Rankin Inlet share a handcrafted, intuitive approach to transformative imagery that is as sympathetic as it is culturally distinct. The exhibition will feature recent and landmark works by each artist as well as collaborative explorations, including sculptures produced in September 2016 by Pierre Aupilardjuk, Shary Boyle, and John Kurok while in residence at the extraordinary Medalta in Medicine Hat.

September 17 - December 18, 2016

Like the vernacular and provisional architectural expressions found in resource camps, or in the initial building stages of both urban and rural communities referenced in previous work by Cedric Bomford, this project takes early settler infrastructure as its foundation, in particular the eccentric buildings and machines that were built to perform a specific task, and which would subsequently be discarded once the task was complete.

September 17 - December 18, 2016

Working between London and Ljubljana, Jasmina Cibic is among a new generation of Slovenian artists whose practice, although acutely conscious of a specific national political, cultural, and artistic lineage, creates a very distinctive language of its own. Cibic’s films, sculptures, and performances focus on the mechanisms that assist in the creation of (trans)national myths, as well as how the authority that delegated them in the first place deals with these myths once their representative moments have lapsed. Esker Foundation is pleased to present several works of Cibic’s, including Tear Down and Rebuild (2015) and Show the Land In Which a Wide Space For National Progress Is Ensured (2015).

September 17 - December 18, 2016

For Larissa Fassler, observing, describing, and naming are strategies to make different realities visible, an approach she believes leads to a deeper understanding of a place, or that counters assumptions, blindness, or even refusals to see reality. For the past ten years, Fassler has been making map-drawing hybrids and objects of urban spaces that comfortably exist between models, sculptures, and relational actions. Her work is developed using a self-mapping exercise, walking, counting, and note taking, often charting the same territory multiple times, which generates a series of interpretations of the same space that differ in precision, dimensions, and proportions. These notations are then transcribed or modeled to activate each layer of architectural detail, advertising slogan, conversation, action, or census-like observations of highly complex public sites.