Composition Scanner present in every image

Curator Blair Fornwald has done an excellent job sorting through the piles of scans and pairing them down into a digestible exhibition.

The works can be broken out into two categories. Works created using twodimensional materials and those created using threedimensional ones.

The three-dimensional pieces are sculptural. The scanner provides a window to which an arrangement of physical objects are recorded.

The scanner is as present in these images as the artists’ hands. Each object fades into the darkness, the further away from the scanner bed a pixelation occurs.

In these arrangements it’s apparent the scanner was designed to document twodimensional objects, but this is not a bad thing.

In April 18 (Pencils) a life’s worth of free pencils spill out over the scanner.

Some have sayings on them that point to their source.

One offers dental care reminders. Others are plain old yellow hbs.

On top of the pencils — or rather underneath, if you imagine the original placement — there is a photograph of two children playing with garden pots and decorative-lawn animals. A red and yellow discoloration taints the original intent of the photograph, but here, blends nicely with the rainbow assortment of discarded pencils.

The most playful element of the exhibition is the accompanying captions.

Once the works were finished, Kozak and Durey asked Ostrowski to describe each arrangement.

The quotes complete the show and give an added value to each piece that needs to be experienced in the gallery.

“I hope you threw those pickles out after this,” she says of one.

A photograph of a woman is familiar to Ostrowski but the woman’s name escapes her: “The girl that is in there is a Sorochuck girl, but I don’t remember her name. Sylvia was one, and her and I were friends. I can’t remember her name, Katie.” Moving back and forth between the quotes and the images became a dance of sorts.

I’d missed things Ostrowski would point out. In one case I even giggled to myself after she identified a yellow substance I couldn’t place.

I left the gallery smiling and thinking about this amazing portrait of Ostrowski and her life.

“Mustard? You guys, honestly!”

3 TO SEE

Variations

Dee Lowe

Green Ark Collected Home Until Sept. 29

During store hours Lowe’s Degas inspired paintings will hang on the walls for the month, but if you come out at night — specifically Sept. 26, the night of Nuit Blanche — her sculptures will creep out into the street.

Abject Abstract

Allysha Larsen, David Stonhouse, Jon Vaughn and Levi Nicholat Art Placement Until Aug. 20 In the city where William Perehudoff made his names the gallery promises this show is a “new generation of Saskatoon artists working in the expanded field of abstract painting.”

Sequential

Monique Martin and Cathryn Miller Curated by Linda Stark Until Aug. 26

After their collaboration at the Mendel last year, Martin and Miller are together again for this show on the University of Saskatchewan campus.