Water Drawing (version 1)

In ths work, Rae Staseson denatures and makes strange water’s un-still surface. Water Drawing is a work in progress, a video and sound installation that is a conceptual, temporal and formal investigation. The materiality of water’s surface is explored using a series of extreme close-ups. Through intense, long, and seamlessly looped studies, one experiences the fragility, vulnerability and mutability of this substance. Reflected light becomes a series of liquid lines that continually morph and transform on the water’s enigmatic surface. This light transforms and becomes unrecognizable, abstracted, appearing to be drawn by hand. The sound design is multi-layered, using manipulated water sounds in combination with ambient source sound collected near Lake Katepwa, Saskatchewan. The familiar is mixed with the unfamiliar, creating a unique aural experience that provides space for reflection, introspection and imagination. This work asks you to sit and be mesmerized by the light dancing between the surface of water and the camera lens, your eyes and the installation, your ears and the hypnotic sound that resonates with this uncanny study. Water Drawing challenges and dissolves lingering modernist boundaries that still exist between video, film, painting, and drawing through the very nature of its formal and technical deceptions.

Please see the Workshop page for details about the vernissage and artists' roundtable.