Large Scale Photomontage by Ross C. Kelly
July 20 - September 14, 2012
Opening
Reception: Meet the Artist, Ross C. Kelly, July 20
(Fri), 3pm - 6pm
Art Beatus (Vancouver) Consultancy Ltd. is
pleased to present EVERYTHING CONCEALS SOMETHING ELSE,
an exhibition featuring large scale photomontage by
Vancouver-based artist, ROSS C. KELLY. The
snapshot is a particular kind of photographic record;
a unique perspective captured in a moment of
opportunity. Hundreds or even thousands of these
singular moments are the artist's starting point, the
elements with which he builds his thickly textured
compositions. From panoramic skylines to narrow
street views, Kelly's chosen sites, often in cities,
are photographed repeatedly from a single vantage
point over the course of several days or weeks,
incorporating their many shifts in light, weather, and
social use. The individual shots are then
reduced in size and manually collaged together to
create remarkably layered scenes. EVERYTHING
CONCEALS SOMETHING ELSE opens Friday, July 20, 2012
starting at 3pm with a public reception – everyone is
welcome - and Ross C. Kelly will be attending the
event.
Kelly uses photomontage as a way to
inject different moments, conditions and events into
a static vista; he captures scenery that is
physically realistic but which tries to reveal the
complex and multilayered reality in a way that
single shot photography or video cannot do.
Cities are not seamless. Their inhabitants,
architecture, even histories are made up of the
co-existence of innumerable disparate parts, forced
into association by a greater structural
logic. While the individual frames that form
Kelly's panoramas, shot from a great distance,
appear to mesh as a coherent whole, the camera lens
increasingly distorts its subject at ever-closer
range, revealing disjunctions and gaps, which for
the artist is a fitting metaphor of the reality of
urban life. Kelly's works suggest there can
never be a singular, stable image of the city.
While each snapshot, like each individual viewpoint,
exists as a discrete moment, our understanding of a
particular place is always multiple, carrying with
it the memory of other times, the knowledge of other
spaces.
Kelly uses photomontage as a way to
inject different moments, conditions and events into
a static vista; he captures scenery that is
physically realistic but which tries to reveal the
complex and multilayered reality in a way that
single shot photography or video cannot do.
Cities are not seamless. Their inhabitants,
architecture, even histories are made up of the
co-existence of innumerable disparate parts, forced
into association by a greater structural
logic. While the individual frames that form
Kelly's panoramas, shot from a great distance,
appear to mesh as a coherent whole, the camera lens
increasingly distorts its subject at ever-closer
range, revealing disjunctions and gaps, which for
the artist is a fitting metaphor of the reality of
urban life. Kelly's works suggest there can
never be a singular, stable image of the city.
While each snapshot, like each individual viewpoint,
exists as a discrete moment, our understanding of a
particular place is always multiple, carrying with
it the memory of other times, the knowledge of other
spaces.
In conjunction with the exhibit at Art
Beatus will be a public conceptual art project from
July 12 to September 7, which, starting with
Vancouver’s Stanley Park Seawall, involves Kelly
inscribing temporary thin black lines of latitude,
longitude and their numerical coordinates onto
segments of the path, essentially converting the
terrain into a 1:1 scale map. “My practice is
concerned with how the idea of location often
requires the interpretation of coordinates that are
exterior to ourselves, how those coordinates shift,
disappear and reappear constantly, how defining who
we are, where we are and what our culture means is
often possible only through positioning ourselves
relative to other things and how and why this has
never been more true than it is today.”
ROSS C. KELLY is from Dublin,
Ireland. In 1996 he received his BA (Hons) in
Behavioural Science from the American College
Dublin, a Diploma in Photography from New York
Institute of Photography in 2004, a Diploma in
Professional Photography from Vancouver's Focal
Point School of Photography also in 2004, and in
2010, a Post-Graduate Diploma in Art History from
the University of British Columbia. Kelly's
works have been exhibited both locally and
internationally and he is the recipient of a number
of awards. EVERYTHING CONCEALS SOMETHING ELSE runs
to Friday, September 14, 2012 at Art Beatus
(Vancouver). For more information, please
visit our website at www.artbeatus.com
or call the gallery at 1 (604) 688-2633.
Art Beatus, with a location in Vancouver, Canada and two locations in Hong Kong, showcases international art with a focus on contemporary Chinese art. Art Beatus (Vancouver) is located in the Nelson Square Office Tower at 108 – 808 Nelson Street in Vancouver, BC.
Art Beatus (Vancouver)
Consultancy Ltd. is open Monday to Friday, 10am-6pm
and is closed on weekends and holidays.
Underground and street parking is available.
Free admission.
