| Liza Eurich and Tegan Moore | May 12 – June 25, 2016 |
In order for cultural commodities to function expediently, legibility and transparency act as a conduit that permits these items to reach an expanded audience, whereby clarity ensures that meaning is directly and immediately translatable. As a result, these strategies widen the scope of commodities and simultaneously allow for ease of consumption. This facilitates the logic of capital and promotes an ever-expanding marketplace.1
Things that prefer to be quiet. Things that refuse to be visible.
Semiopaque considers the implications that arise from the act of producing works imbued with a deliberate characteristic of reticence. Latency is not a refusal; it does not mark immobility or illegibility, but rather it functions as a site of contestation.2 Reticence can work both within and beneath a system of inquiry, producing meaning through an intentional restraining of one’s own actions. The self-limiting quality of the quiet or hidden object can allow it to elicit unexpected defiance, affecting and exposing the fragility of expectations. Muffled audibility and blurred visibility requires attentiveness in order to hear or a straining in order to see. The self-reflexive nature of these strategies provides an avenue to critique the demands of consumerism and high performance culture.
1 Adorno, Theodor. “Culture Industry Reconsidered.” In The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture, edited by J. M. Bernstein,
98-106. New York, New York: Routledge, 2001.
2 Verwoert, Jan. “Exhaustion and Exuberance: Ways to Defy the Pressure to Perform.” In Art Sheffield 08: Yes No and Other Options, 89-112.
Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Contemporary Art Forum, 2008.
Liza Eurich completed her BFA from Emily Carr University in 2010 and her MFA from Western University in 2012. She co-publishes the online project Moire and recently participated in international residencies at Acme Studios, London and Glasgow Sculpture Studios, Glasgow. Represented by MKG127 in Toronto, her work has also been exhibited at Neutral Ground, Hamilton Artists Inc., Plug-In ICA, McIntosh Gallery, Justina M. Barnicke Gallery and the Power Plant Gallery. She has a forthcoming solo show at Open Studio.
Tegan Moore received a BFA from Emily Carr University in 2008 and an MFA from Western University in 2014. She has exhibited at Helen Pitt, Access Gallery, 221 A, Equinox, and CSA Space in Vancouver, Cooper Cole and MKG127 in Toronto, and participated in residencies at Flaggfabrikken Centre for the Arts, Bergen and Faucet Media Arts, New Brunswick. She has a forthcoming solo show at CSA Space in June 2016. She lives and works in London, Ontario.
