Friday 24.05.2002 VASABLADET
Traces from disappeared worlds and times past
Exhibition Vaasa Art Hall
Lisbeth Rosenback
Traces is the name of an exhibition of graphic works by the Canadian
artists Bonnie Jordan, Marja-Leena Rathje and Steven Dixon which opens at the
Art Hall next Saturday. Different ways of leaving traces behind is the mutual
theme for all three exhibitors.
Steven Dixon describes memories of a lost world. His photogravures depict views
from closed coalmines where equipment, pipes, fans and washrooms have been
left behind and have fallen into decay. Dixon works with a large format camera
and uses only natural light for his black and white pictures, which often necessitates
long exposure times. The result is pictures, that bring out the beauty in an
industrial epoch with all that it entails of rusty, broken everyday objects
and scratched, shabby walls. – My goal is to combine mood and beauty
with the mysterious and unknown. Some pictures may even be experienced as somewhat
threatening, says Dixon and points at a motif of a bench with a row of chains
fastened to the wall above. The idea of a torture chamber passes through the
onlookers mind. But in reality its about the miners changing room. Baskets
used to hang in the chains, which contained the men’s private clothes,
while they were working.
Dixon's colleague Marja-Leena Rathje has, as the first name suggests, Finnish
roots. The family came from Varkaus and moved to Canada when Marja-Leena was
5 years old. The Finnish language still runs quite smoothly for Marja-Leena
Rathje, although she prefers to talk about her art in English.
Rathje documents different historic traces in her etchings: The traces nature
leaves behind in the form of, for example, unusual weathered rock formations
and fossils, and the traces man has left, like runes or ancient artwork cut
into cliff walls. Often Marja-Leena Rathje combines these two types of traces
into one and the same art work. Rathje starts from a digital photograph which
is transferred to the photographic plate.
Bonnie Jordan also works with graphic art which first has been prepared on
a computer. For her part she has chosen to describe her personal history by
studying the traces time makes on her own life and face. Often photography
is an element in Jordan's work. For instance in the picture that describes
a facemask of her own face, Bonnie Jordan has worked into a picture program
in order to create a three-dimensional effect.
The three Canadian artists often work together and discuss and give feedback
to each other during the course of the process. All of them can show long lists
of exhibitions in which they have participated. However, this is the first
time they have exhibited together.ts hope that the Traces exhibition will be
exhibiting also in
Canada.
Translation from Swedish by Anita Fagerlund of North Vancouver