Cloud is an assemblage of limited-edition prints and objects that explores relational meaning.  The collection of works convey messages that are sometimes absurd, often humorous, never singular, but existing in relation to other parts of the whole. The materials chosen for the prints usually have an association with the text or message.  For example, the print called Invisible Histories, depicts one of the 280,000 radioactive mice contaminated by atomic research that are buried near Niagara Falls, New York; the artist used green, glow-in-the-dark ink in combination with black flocking to define the image of the furry creature.

The cluster of objects called Decoy, the artist made a series of 3D-printed, trompe l’oeil-painted Tim Horton’s doughnuts. This ubiquitous Canadian icon slips effortlessly into the realm of sculpture and contemporary art. The relationship between the doughnut and the hole, the original and the copy, the single and the baker’s dozen, may be confounding or irrational, but serves to point out how ideas are ephemeral structures. The artist writes: “Absurdity, irrationality, immanence, failure and anachronism are the unifying themes of Cloud… Ideas arise and are fleeting. They form, peak and disappear in sets of relationships to other ideas. Insights echo across instances of ideas.”

Within her conceptual strategy that is Cloud, Szőke makes reference to Theodore Adorno’s Music and Language in which he argues that a musical phrase does not exist on its own, but is deeply relational: “Everything becomes what it is in memory and in expectation through its physical contiguity with its neighbour and its mental connection with what is distant from it.” The artist draws attention to each of her print works as one idea existing within a larger cloud of meaning.

The installation of Cloud in the ornately detailed parlours of historic Rodman Hall also incorporated an antique fainting couch. There is a theory that the Victorian fainting couch was a home treatment for female hysteria. The artist produced a limited edition multiple in the form of a silk-screened souvenir pillow to adorn the couch. The image is of a woman that has fainted. The multiples, in the edition of 100, follows previous editions by Micah Lexier, Marc Bell and Joy Walker produced for Rodman Hall.

October 10, 2015 to January 17, 2016
Curated by Stuart Reid

Rodman Hall Arts Centre
109 St Paul Crescent, St. Catharines, ON
http://www.brocku.ca/rodman-hall

Exhibition Catalogue HERE, print version forthcoming in 2023.

Exhibition Content:

Failuer (A.P.), 2013; Linoleum print process blue typesetters ink on Arches 88 paper, 26 x 35 cm

The Geometry of Meaning, 2015 ; Serigraph on Arches 88 paper, 56 x 56 cm

Completely, 2015; Four colour serigraph on Arches 88 paper, 36 x 42 cm

coffee and doughnut, 2015; serigraph on Arches 88 paper, 36 x 42 cm

Pieces of String, 2013; Serigraph on vellum envelope with string and red wax seal, 7 x 9 cm

Invisible Histories, 2013; Two-colour serigraph: green/glow in the dark ink with black ink and flocking on Arches 88 paper, 28 x 25 cm

REASONABLE & SENSELESS (A.P.), 2015; Foiled cardstock banner, 10 x 64 cm

A Set of Instructions, 2015; Custom printed matchbooks, 5 x 5 cm each (150)

Decoy (ed. 5), 2015; 3D-printed, hand painted objects, 5@ 4 x 8 cm each

the meeting of minds, 2015; flocked serigraph, 20 x 20 cm

masterplan, 2015; flocked serigraph, 20 x 20 cm

Sink, 2014; Archival digital print on Hahnemuhle paper, 41 x 31 cm

Wall, 2014; Archival digital print on Hahnemuhle paper, 41 x 31 cm

spiritual spring cleaning sale, 2015; laser copy multiple for free gallery distribution, 43 x 28 cm each

bold as love, 2015; 10 hand hooked cotton rugs, concert t-shirts

Faint Feint, 2015; Print 38 x 56 cm and decorative throw pillow (artist multiple for sale)

Smokes, 2015; Knit cigarettes, 20 cm x 178 cm (2)