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.

20. Isabella Stefanescu, Carlito Ghioni & Klaus Engel (Waterloo, ON) - American Shot

American Shot is an interactive installation incorporating a screen that is both a real and a simulated mirror. The act of responding to one's reflection -- choosing a position, looking backwards and self-examination -- are stances to which the screen responds with a story determined by the spectator's attention and point of view. American Shot is a translation of "plan americain" an expression used by French film critics of the 1950's to refer to a medium-long shot of a character -- a camera shot originally used in Westerns to explicitly show the gun of gunslinger. When the phrase "American Shot" is encountered out of context, it recalls newspaper headlines rather than of camera work. The micro-narratives at the core of this project explore this ambiguity. This project has been made possible with the support of the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund, Kitchener-Waterloo Community Foundation, Ontario Arts Council, Canadian Film Centre Media Lab, Banff New Media Institute, the Multicultural Cinema Club and Christie Digital.

21. Max Streicher (Toronto, ON) - Dung Beetle

Dung Beetle is a 30-foot-long inflated sculpture of a dung beetle on its back, constructed of recycled billboard vinyl. Hieroglyphs of advertising slogans are etched across the glossy vinyl, which Streicher chose specifically for its insect-like sheen and tactile qualities. Known for his inflatable installations and kinetic sculptures, Streicher contrasts the heady and buoyant messages usually conveyed by inflatables with existentialist references to Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis.

22. Roula Partheniou (Toronto, ON) - Circular Logic

Circular Logic features new work from the artist's Handmade Readymade project. The artist's ongoing series of trompe l'oeil paintings of books function as text works, found poetry and discrete art objects. Partheniou's work is marked by a concern for the marriage of material and form and is drawn together by a strong sense of both logic and play. Using familiar objects as a starting point, she plays simple games using an object's inherent rules and physical properties to in turn transform them.