CAFKA.09

VERACITY

The Contemporary Art Forum Kitchener & Area is pleased to present from September 18 through October 4, 2009, Veracity, CAFKA’s 7th exhibition of contemporary visual art in public spaces.  With our exhibiting partners Cambridge Galleries, Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery, Critical Media Lab, Homer Watson House & Gallery, IMPACT Theatre festival and the Kitchener Waterloo Art Gallery, twenty-six contemporary artists install, perform and exhibit art that occupies and energizes the public (and gallery) spaces of the region.  To complement the exhibition program, CAFKA has organized a series of artist talks, exhibition tours and educational workshops for adults and students.

“Veracity” means truth and the question of truth in our increasingly digitally decentred world is something that keeps nagging at us.  What is real: The streaming images that cross the screens of our televisions, computers and smart phones?  The relationships and the identities we create on-line?  The images and icons of strength, beauty and justice that populate our contemporary pop cultural pantheon?  CAFKA invited artists to respond to the concept of Veracity in their methods and in their subjects.  We hope you will consider and respond to what they have created.

Veracity is, with the Impact Theatre Festival and Open Ears Festival of Music and Sound, part of 2009 Year of Art Festivals in Waterloo Region.  CAFKA is a partner in the Waterloo Region: Arts Together: Creative Intersections initiative.  We are grateful for the generous support of Christie Digital, our lead corporate sponsor and the facilitator for all of our digital projection needs.  We are grateful to the Musagetes Foundation, which has been a key long term supporter of CAFKA.  We are proud and thankful for the constant support shown by the City of Kitchener, which has helped us grow through the provision of exhibition spaces, advice, encouragement and support.  We are very pleased to have the support of the Ontario Trillium Foundation which has supported CAFKA’s establishment and incorporation and which has recently committed to supporting CAFKA’s development for the next three years.  CAFKA also wants to thank the Ontario Cultural Attractions Fund, the Kitchener Waterloo Community Foundation, the Ontario Arts Council, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund and the City of Waterloo for the support which they have provided for Veracity.

Finally, CAFKA is only possible because of its volunteers, people who contribute hundreds of unpaid hours toward every aspect of the organization of the CAFKA’s events.  Without them CAFKA would not be possible.  Thank you.

10. Iga Janik (Peterborough, ON)- Monotone

Monotone is a sound installation comprised of a series of FM radio transmitters, each equipped with its own microphone, broadcasting overlapping live sound of the surrounding environment. It is a sonic interpretation of the landscape of Kitchener City Hall, using extremely low range transmitters installed throughout City Hall, drawing our attention to the authentic and residing auditory spaces of the location without being specific to the actual sounds or their sources.

http://www.ilansandler.com/

11. Janice Kerbel (London, UK)

Janice Kerbel's practice often employs the framework of a "plan" and the rigourous application of existing systems in order to explore the relationship between reality and the imaginary. Her Remarkable series is a selection of prints reminiscent of fairground posters that announce the spectacular feats of improbable beings. Underwood is a series of four love letters, rendered in a typeface designed to mimic a faulty typewriter. Using text and the subtleties of reproduction, Kerbel leaves the viewer to imagine a visual equivalent of hyperbole and promise.
 

12. Don Maynard (Kingston, ON) - Maintaining Gravity

Maintaining Gravity is an illuminated floating house that hovers above the fountain in Kitchener's Civic Square. The house is held down by guy-wire ropes, which keep it from floating away into the sky above. Maintaining Gravity alludes to those moments in life when things are full of light and filled with possibilities, moments when gravity seems an option and not a given. This work has been made possible in part with the support of Adams Landscaping.