- Dan O'Neill
Gabriela Jolowicz // Present Density
Gabriela Jolowicz
Present Density
September 2 - October 17, 2015
Alberta Printmakers Main Gallery
Opening Reception: September 4, 2015
"A line is a dot that went for a walk"
Paul Klee
It's an obvious state of affairs, blanketed as we are under multiple cultural moods, warmed by communal temperatures and showered by the shifting presence of things; that our senses are replenished in a second to second unfolding of lived events. And it is also an obvious state of affairs that we are carried by uncompromising waves of physical and cognitive tension, bound together in ever changing minute-to-minute negotiation with all things.
Stoicism communicates universal forces of attraction uniting elements and beings embodied in a word we value, Sympathy. From that perspective, it is likely Jolowicz continues with a variation of this filtering exercise, where the influence of elements on the beings in her work, impart the notion that they may be sympathizing with their situations. She also extends that occasion, unlocking signs pointing toward mindfulness in favor of empathy, an analogous force of attraction, one of deep absorption more accurately aligned perhaps, to what Jolowicz depicts. We should make every effort to decipher what we see on our own terms.
All stimuli calculates action and reaction, compelling us to take stock of the hour upon hour tide of such cause and effect; lived action leaving indelible traces of multiple encounters, abundant fleeting moments, so many remembered expressions. We are a privileged species and for better or for worse, we are a tectonic mass. Evidently, her reflections describe some of the shifting sympathies of social tectonics, a fundamental gesture from Jolowicz, where she tells us how to dance with the material world. Creative action engraves everlasting furrows into enriched cognitive soil and it is there that Jolowicz sows her thoughtful traces, the purpose of which intends to cultivate, harvest and celebrate the thanksgiving of our common experience. This is a major intersection where Gabriella leads us, compelling us to cross under a mindset of open sympathy; where we'll recognize in crossing, that the effects of her image gravity really attracts us in an invitation to gracefully empathize.
Jolowicz imagines streams of retrievable records as our birthright to the past in order to progress in the present, with a potential view of the future. She preserves compressions of existence; that's obvious. Mapping perceived excursions, hiking cultural elevations ripening with communal spaces over which, through which she moves and harvests; Jolowicz picks up unrehearsed visual cues much like nectar is returned to the hive. One sure result of gathering these reflections accumulated from Jolowicz's flight path is the guaranteed promise of a sweetness of image incubation, a human custom in which reminiscences slumber before they are awakened. In its various guises, memory catnaps well hidden in the honeycombed subconscious and digital memories keep well enough on memory cards, without appreciable deterioration one might add. Yet as we all know, it is the image alone no matter how it is conjured, that will radiate familiar sparks as it is brought to surface, assuming concrete form.
Buoyed by the digital, the present-day analog record keeping Gabriela Jolowicz registers, sound the facets and fragments of sense perception; the busy-ness of any peculiar day gathered in countless gestures cloaked in an intimate method of image invention. Here at this material intersection, Jolowicz crosses repeatedly with purpose and ease, moving to and from her studio work venturing through an open concept social world where details are later nurtured by physical effort; forcing carving blades to link with her observations. This solitary activity never fails to fascinate, to imagine the larger preoccupation Jolowicz pursues carving stories into graphic voices, speaking between the wholly analog and the virtual digital.
Jolowicz shares this preoccupation with a distant methodology, where conversations talk of public and private records, filtered from within communal spaces and populated events. It is at this vibrant intersection where Jolowicz crosses, one that signals a beautiful pertinence in making critical documents, where action and reaction are married to making images, incised here and printed several hundred years after the fact.
The anomalous spaces Gabriela stores hold the inventions of wanderers, of locations, illuminated screens and diagrammatic stations, and always an avalanche of objects and elements blanketing our telltale associations; faced with multiple compressions she infers intuitively, depicting less than what one is inclined to feel. With prowess and well positioned, Jolowicz conveys her moment-to-moment observations where compositional forces take precedent, succinctly outlining for us that the telling matters most.
That tactic is welcomed, refreshing really. We should never be offered the whole story; we must learn instead to look carefully and consider listening, to participate in translating whatever telltale hints Jolowicz offers, expressly in our own terms.
How else should we learn to walk with the day-to-day diversions Gabriela presents?
