Nicolé Vogelzang: Landfill
June 23 to October 7, 2007
Guelph artist Nicolé Vogelzang began her engagement with objects of consumer culture by painting gummy bears (the candy) to refine her still-life skills. She became known in local circles as “the gummy bear girl.” Vogelzang posed the bears in human positions and studied the way the highly-coloured, translucent confections reflected light: a process that she continues to employ in her current practice. In the exhibition Landfill, Vogelzang’s new paintings depicted innocuous, discarded objects that are animisticly imbued with a sense of purpose and life. However, Vogelzang traded in the rather benign gummy bears for characters of her own creation: aluminum cans and plastic cups transformed with paint and metal sheers into cartoon-like figures. Vogelzang deftly painted her creatures (with their angry, jack-o-lantern features) into seductive, almost filmic, landscapes. Her highly mimetic representations involved improbable subjects engaged in imaginative and amusing situations. Metaphorically, Vogelzang’s subjects revealed the misguided assumptions of a consumer society which is oblivious to its own detrimental impact on life and land.
A graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design (Toronto), Nicolé Vogelzang is a candidate in the Master of Fine Arts program at the University of Guelph. Vogelzang has participated in exhibitions across the country and, in 2006, contributed to the Art for Heart fundraising auction for Casey House. Selected exhibition venues include Gallery 888: Michael Gibson Gallery (London, Ontario), The Elizabeth Russ Gallery Toronto), and the James Baird Gallery (Pouch Cove,
Newfoundland).
Images:
Top left:
DSC0414, 2007 (oil on board)
top right: Fela Kuti, 2007 (oil on board)
Bottom left:
Cup, 2007 (oil on board)
Bottom centre: Painting, 2007 (oil on board)
Purchased with funds raised by the Art Centre Volunteers and with financial support from the Canada Council for the Arts Acquisition Assistance Program, 2007. Macdonald Stewart Art Centre Collection