Sandy Plotnikoff’s ongoing series is called Foil Problem, and it’s a lovely predicament to have.
For almost a decade, the artist has been experimenting with commercial foil stamping — used in everything from signage to stationary — with a gleeful, experimental edge. Generating big rough fragments from the fussy material is a perpetual source of fascination, not to mention beauty. It’s what you might call a nice problem to have.
Plotnikoff’s show WHAT, is on at YYZ Artists’ Outlet, 401 Richmond St. W., to March 12.
ANDREW FRANCIS WALLACE PHOTOS /TORONTO STAR
Sandy Plotnikoff at his Kensington Market studio.
Plotnikoff’s collection of commercial foil rolls runs the gamut of every imaginable colour and texture, but it’s only the raw material of an elusive practice that reinvents itself with each piece. The artist’s experimentation with the limits of the...
A heat table in the studio is used to separate the material from its thin plastic backing. Plotnikoff uses an array of thick felt tools, coaxing the thin foil layer onto various surfaces where it is held fast using a slim skin of colourless polymer....
Plotnikoff’s work is a unique form of collage, composed from fragments of commercial foil the artist creates in a painterly fashion, lifting the material from its plastic backing and reshaping it using an array of tools and materials. Here, two large...
Magnets are an essential tool of the trade for Plotnikoff as he composes his dense foil works from stacks of spontaneously made fragments. A magnetic board is his canvas as he moves the various pieces around until he comes up with a composition that he...
Tiny fragments of material and foil are neatly arranged all around the studio. Plotnikoff is always searching for different textures and forms to incorporate into his foil experiments, and his prototyping surrounds him like a tactile database.
Plotnikoff has been experimenting with commercial foil for about a decade. His technique liberates the material in sometimes unexpected ways, as he heat-presses different textures using an array of found material. This sheaf, which is mostly black but...
The use of foil is a perpetual experiment in progress, as Plotnikoff mutates his technique in an endless exploration of material and form. Here, he wondered what would happen if he transferred the material to a sheaf of birch bark, which, successfully,...