exhibitions
Vanitas: Nicholas and Shelia Pye
November 8, 2008 – January 3, 2009
Opening Reception: Saturday, November 8th
6 - 8 pm
"These actions are both heavily incestuous, and not at all: a delicate balance struck by the couple who claim that they are as much like brother and sister as they are lovers. This, perhaps, is the most common and dangerous trapdoor for married life, which, for the Pyes, is a dark series of dangerous games worth looking into." - Laura McLean-Ferris, Artreview
Curator's Office is pleased to announce Vanitas, a new exhibition of cinematic and photographic works by celebrated Canadian husband-wife collaborative team Nicholas and Sheila Pye. This will be the second exhibition of the Pyes' work at Curator's Office. Vanitas includes a film entitled Loudly, Death Unties, which is the final part of a trilogy of films, and five large-scale photographs. The Paper Wall and A Life of Errors, exhibited at Curator's Office in 2006, were the first two films from this provocative trilogy.
In Vanitas, the Pyes play with themes present in the art historical genre of still life painting to examine their own relationship. Carefully staged and precisely crafted, one photograph features the symbolic fodder found in the vanitas painting genre: skulls, ivy, rotting fruit, and books. Four portraits delve into issues of mortality, narcissism, and the complex issues of youthful existence, the nature of being, and death. The artists take their married relationship and allude to the impermanence and illusion of togetherness. It is as though they are faking their deaths to consider their mortality and to repent to one another.
The Pyes relentlessly blur the borders between their lives and their art as they tackle the highly charged yet poetic issues that arise from their own relationship. But theirs is not a self-absorbed biographical fascination. Rather, the relationship depicted in their bodies of work becomes emblematic of all things that can go wrong in a mutually dependent and suffocating relationship. The Pyes' artistic output spans photography, film, performance, video, and installation while acknowledging the profound influences of surrealism in film, narrative conventions in painting, 19th and early 20th century portraiture, and conceptual approaches to subject matter. Given this well-versed theoretical blend, they avoid prosaic performance art documentation preferring to transform their photographs and films into works that cleverly reconfigure art historic antecedents. Additionally the finished works acknowledge their intrinsic aesthetic status as art objects.
The Pyes have exhibited their work at museums such as The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain; Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris, France; Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto, Canada; The Power Plant, Toronto, Canada; The Glenbow Museum, Calgary, Canada; and the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Their work has been screened in numerous international film festivals such as the Toronto International Film Festival, Canada; the Locarno International Film Festival, Switzerland; and Les Rencontres Internationales in Paris, Berlin, and Madrid. Their work has also been exhibited internationally at numerous galleries including Curator's Office, Washington, DC; Artcore/Fabrice Marcolini, Toronto; Alexia Goethe Gallery, London; Begoña Malone Gallery, Madrid; and Caprice Horn Gallery, Berlin among others.
Nick Pye CV
Shelia Pye CV
Image Above: Vanitas I, 2008, digital-c print, edition of 5, 2 APs, 60" x 40"