- The Latcham Art Centre is currently hosting Continuous Memory, a new exhibition featuring the works of artists Max Lupo and José Andrés Mora.
- Through a diverse range of media, techniques, and repurposed objects, they explore how the intrinsic meaning of words, language, and memories can shift and change across various modes of creation, presentation, and interpretation.
- Visitors to the gallery encounter both passive and interactive elements as they move between artworks.
- Max Lupo incorporates new technologies into outdated machines to investigate messaging and meaning through digital programming.
- Venezuelan-Canadian artist José Andrés Mora creates text-based artwork, digital drawings, and video installations rooted in his personal narratives and memories.
- The exhibition will be on display at the Latcham Art Centre gallery until December 6, 2023. It is located within Stouffville’s Leisure Centre at 2 Park Drive.
One of Max Lupo’s creations, the Mansfield Reporter, combines a digital screen and computer within an 8mm slide viewer. The computer generates randomized sentences by blending words and phrases from William Shakespeare, Gertrude Stein, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Printed phrases created by a past iteration of the device are also featured throughout the gallery.
The results can be perceived by viewers as funny, nonsensical, meaningful, poetic, or even philosophical. The exhibition brochure elaborates: “It does a wonderful job of pointing out how eager humans are to make meaning from randomness…how eager we are to trust information we get from artificial intelligence despite the seemingly random way it creates sentences.”
In his video installation titled Time and Light, José Andrés Mora presents an immersive kitchen scene overlaid with complimentary text. The imagery and messaging morph over a period of eight minutes, encouraging viewers to reflect on their relationship with past memories of life and home and how they can evolve over time.
Mora’s printed pieces seek to visualize and articulate memories of his home in Caracas, Venezuela, using digital vector gradients and poetry, the brochure explains. “They showcase a kind of beautiful desperation through language and renderings of light in an attempt to recall a memory in full detail.”
These are just a few examples from a diverse and captivating compilation of artworks from the two creators. Residents can discover more about the exhibition, artists, and their work via Latcham’s Continuous Memory brochure.