TIME / FRAME

About

“Staging in the sense we are talking about is a kind of framing; in theatre, the stage is the frame that allows us to make sense of what is to follow – that the execution wasn’t really an execution, that the newlyweds aren’t really married. While not a part of the performance itself, the frame is what allows us to see it as a performance.” - Chris Fleming & John O’Carroll, The Art of the Hoax, 47.

Sharon Katz and Véronique Sunatori, two artists at disparate points in their lives and careers, explore the themes of temporality and materiality through their contrastive but complementary works. 

An accomplished animator and filmmaker, SHARON KATZ brings her mixed media work incorporating pages of encyclopedias, ink, paint and found objects to the exhibition. Katz’s works depict movement and action, merging the stasis of her painted frames with the vitality in her work, notable in "String Theory," where the tennis player yearns to engage below the glass with the ball, finding itself in a “perpetual state of suspended animation.” Katz has only recently begun working with paint and its role in her work varies within each piece - from background to foreground, from heavy touches to light. Also recently designing sets for theatrical production, Katz is cognizant of the ways in which each work becomes a storyboard, a natural extension from animation.

VÉRONIQUE SUNATORI, currently working towards her MFA at York University, creates works that offer alternative perspectives, as can easily be seen in her series of severed and modified frames, effectively reintroducing the “staging” of artwork as the art itself, albeit disjointed from its original purpose and appearance. Sunatori also incorporates her identity, born to a Japanese father and Québécoise mother, to her Portraits series, wherein she has drawn over the glass covering photographic portraits of the artist, and her Skillfully series, which references traditional Japanese wood and paper screens. For Sunatori, invoking sculptural forms allows for her work to breathe conceptually and both asks for and offers up alternative points of view.

Staged together in the juxtaposing space of the gallery, the performativity accomplished through the two artists’ works is present, provoking debate on the functionality of staging and framing and, indeed, of a suspension of disbelief.

Text by Rose Ekins, Curator
--
ARTIST BIOS:

SHARON KATZ is a visual artist intrigued by the way in which marks and forms can generate the illusion of movement and even a sense of vitality. Sharon’s practice includes works on paper, animated short film, and experimental animation. Sharon has a Bachelor of Science and a Master’s of Fine Art, as well as a blog at Animation World Network. Sharon is based in Ottawa.

VÉRONIQUE SUNATORI is an emerging visual artist based in Toronto. Born from a Québécois mother and Japanese-born father in Gatineau (QC), she moved to Montreal to complete a BFA in Studio Arts from Concordia University. Currently an MFA Candidate at York University, Her multidisciplinary practice ranging from painting to interactive sculpture focuses mainly on the process of discovering, learning, and evolving. After receiving two Individual Special Project Grants by Concordia University’s Fine Arts Student Alliance (2013), she also obtained a research grant for emerging artists from the Quebec Council for the Arts (2016) and a fellowship and scholarship for her graduate studies at York University (2016). Véronique Sunatori has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in both Canada and Japan over 10 group exhibitions notably at the FOFA gallery, the Eastern Bloc, the Montreal Arts Centre, the Red Head Gallery and AIRY Yamanashi, including important planned future exhibitions at Studio Sixty-Six (Ottawa), et Circa Art Actuel (Montreal, QC).