By Mike Landry
Sean Weisgerber's "Shifting Sands" and Adam Dodd's "Collage Study No. 1"
Adam Dodd and Sean Weisgerber have been friends for several years now but since sharing studio space they’ve turned friendship into artistic fervor. Collaborating on ideas and common ideas in their work, they compete to see who can stay the latest and work the hardest.
“The studios like a tension filter sort of. We just go in there and knuckle down,” says Dodd. “We’re actually a little bit competitive.”
The first fruits of their labour can be found in their new show Spectral Rhythms. Although the Vancouver-based artists will be showing their individual work, each of the new series offer insight and commentary on the graphic vocabulary and geometric forms they’re exploring.
Since Weisgerber just graduated from Emily Carr this year, Dodd jokes about the benefits about having a fresh art school brain around to pick. As they develop a language that unites their ideas in the studio, both are forging forward in different veins to express it.
Influenced by graphics, video games, movies and comic books, Dodd plays with the graphic elements he finds in the modern environment of Vancouver. Through his work he then seeks to likewise influence his environment, but unlike his past work, which is more stylized, the new pieces stand apart by having a source.
Dodd found a stack of Vancouver Magazines from the 80s when he moved into his studio. The pages had a grainy aesthetic that appealed to him as collage elements, and he was struck by the similarities of mid-80s Vancouver and today. The SkyTrain’s Expo line, built for the 86 World’s Fair, harkened the new Canada line built for the coming Olympics.
“It’s kind of like finding something between the esoteric and those reoccurring similar dates. Just kind of letting that esoteric spectral in-between influence the work. Initially I was thinking the idea of spectral locomotive, which also has a pop culture reference to Ghostbusters there.”
Rather than drawing influence from the city, Weisgerber focuses on the graphics of art and modern images. While at school he always sought to create a unique style, but was always forced to learn someone had already done something similar. No longer trying to find a unique mark, he’s trying to configure these marks together.
“I’m trying to find all the little elements of visual language—all those visual signs that can be used to be remixed and varied and used to create a new language. What I’m trying to do is find what the language of art is, to try to distill everything to this basic picture element form. Sort of use that pictorial element as a mutable diction that you can reuse. I’m trying to figure out all the units of language.”
Weisgerber’s new abstract works are hung at odd angles in an attempt to reset the parameters of of how work is displayed, but his main work is on display in another room. His ever evolving Phoenix project is an examination in how pixels, as basic underlying units of graphic images, can be reworked and reformed. During the show’s run, Weisgerber will constantly be adding, removing and reworking his painted pixels.
Both artists in their unique way offer a view of our graphic-based society and a look into how we evolved to this point, all from their shared Vancouver studio.
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