My first house - Lenka Novakova

un centre dédié à la production et à la présentation de l’art, des pratiques contemporaines et des nouveaux médias
a centre dedicated to the production and the presentation of art, contemporary practices and new media
4001, rue Berri, local 301, Montréal (Québec) H2L 4H2
exhibition
www.oboro.net
Tél. : 514 844-3250
[email protected]
Rivers and Skies — My first house
Lenka Novakova
Opening: Saturday, September 18, at 5 pm
Artis Talk at 4:30 pm
September 18 – October 23, 2010
© L. Novakova, 2010
“Moving the house piece by piece... The land never belonged to me—Neither I belong to the land…”
L. Novakova, Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, June 2010
L
enka Novakova pulls apart the burnt remains of a house,
piece by piece, rebuilding it in OBORO’s exhibition space,
reconstructing not only its architecture, but an entire landscape.
On the banks of the St. Lawrence River, having discovered the
fire-ravaged house while doing a residency at Est-Nord-Est
(Saint-Jean-Port-Joli), the artist made it her anchorage—a place
from which to study the complex and subtle phenomena that
manifest themselves through sky and water. Lenka Novakova
took her post within the desolate structure. She contemplated
the tides, the clouds, and the variations in light, deepening her
understanding of the landscape and of those traces of human
memory that survive.
Lenka Novakova was born in the Czech Republic, received her
undergraduate degree from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art,
Philadelphia, and MFA from Concordia University in Montreal. Her
practice is concerned with an ephemeral poetic quality a moment of
recreation and reflective thought through constructed environments,
simple technologies and moving light; with crossover in cinema and
theatre technologies. She has been recipient of numerous fellowships,
This dialogue between river, sky and house is patiently documented and presented in the gallery. Within the reconstructed
architecture, through its skeleton and interstices, she projects
videos of the original landscape. Like a memory that envelops
the building, the river’s waters continue to ebb and flow as the
light deepens into red. The changing dimensions of these natural phenomena echo the uncertain and ephemeral nature of
human life. For Lenka Novakova this is a sensorial quest, as well
as a meditation on memory and temporality.
awards and has an active exhibition record in Canada and abroad.
Recent fellowships included Coring Museum of Glass, NY, Urban Glass,
NY, Vermont Studio Center, VT or La Chambre Blanche, Quebec. Recent
solo exhibitions included Cambridge Public Art Gallery, Grimsby
Public Art Gallery, Faculty of Fine Arts Gallery (Fofa) and others.
<www.lenkanovak.com>
- 30 Contact: OBORO, September 2, 2010
The gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday, from noon to 5 pm
OBORO remercie ses membres pour leur appui, ainsi que les organismes suivants pour leur généreux soutien financier : le service des arts médiatiques et le service des arts visuels du Conseil des Arts du Canada, le Conseil des arts et des
lettres du Québec, le Conseil des arts de Montréal, le ministère du Patrimoine canadien, le ministère de la Culture et des Communications du Québec, Emploi-Québec, le Service du développement culturel et de la qualité du milieu de vie de
la Ville de Montréal, la Caisse populaire Desjardins du Mont-Royal, le Cirque du Soleil, ainsi que les compagnies Discreet, Adobe, Computer Systems Odessa et Metric Halo.