WONDER: Sage Szkabarnicki-Stuart

Koffler Arts is thrilled to welcome Sage Szkabarnicki-Stuart as the inaugural artist in our new gallery space, Koffler301, for a solo exhibition (May 29 – July 13), curated by David Liss. The exhibition, WONDER, highlights Szkabarnicki-Stuart’s practice of intersecting early cinema, vaudeville and slapstick comedy, advertising, social media, performance, and contemporary art.

Szkabarnicki-Stuart is equally inspired by physical acts performed by artist Chris Burden in his early videos, such as Shoot (1971) and Trans-Fixed (1974), as well as by Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills (1977-1980), disguised self-portraits exploring mutable identities. Similarly, Szkabarnicki-Stuart performs acts for the camera in resourcefully self-made, low-tech sets that elicit direct audience response through humour, absurdity, endearing or bizarre behaviour. While provoking a sense of amusement and wonder, these acts are not solely intended as self-portraits or site-gags. The images reflect charged moments influenced by her personal history and her surroundings.

“My practice, focused on self-portraiture, draws upon the work of Cindy Sherman by appropriating contemporary commercial aesthetics and styles, typically created by large teams of professionals working for prominent brands, to focus on fleeting emotions and mundane objects,” says Szkabarnicki-Stuart.

WONDER features a selection of photographs and videos produced over the last eight years. In addition, Szkabarnicki-Stuart extends her practice by transforming Koffler Arts’ new gallery and performance space, a former classroom and office space on the third floor at Youngplace, into a site-responsive architectural environment of visual play and theatricality. Appropriating vocabularies of advertising and commercial photography, she includes homemade billboards, glossy photographs printed on vinyl applied directly onto the walls, and a series of photographs of kid goats taken during a photo shoot in the space itself.

For media inquiries please contact Melissa Than mthan@kofflerarts.org.