Angela Grauerholz Solo Exhibition 2018 :Olga Korper Gallery

Angela Grauerholz

April 28, 2018 – June 2, 2018

Angela Grauerholz is a Canadian photographer, her work balances on the tightrope between romantic and realistic past. She sets the stage with purposely-extended exposures to create dreamlike scenes, intentionally trapping an unsuspecting audience in a state of nostalgic déjà vu. She blends the ambiguity of space and a familiarity of setting, offering gateways into other dimensions, other worlds of memory and time.

Our memories lose detail and fade as we are distanced from them by the passing of time. Each memory becomes more about the flavour than the setting, the feeling of the place more than the actual historic detail. The senses that surround past events become the detail filled in over time. Memory is subjective, manipulated and changed every time we recall a moment in our past. Angela’s approach is from a philosophical standpoint, working intentionally with sentimentality and nostalgia to confuse and enchant.

Large-scale photographs take on a stage-like intensity, like an open window into a scene so commonplace it could be anywhere, anytime, past or future. Her photographs depict a type of ‘anyplace’: if not this exact carpet, then another; if not this wallpaper, this mirror, this window or hallway, then somewhere at some time, one will have come upon its twin. Grauerholz plays with the interchangeability of association and recognition. She wants her audience to recognize the empty table, it’s the one abandoned after a meal among friends…or maybe the one anticipating being cleared before a reservation is ready. The mise-en-scene, as Angela describes it.

In this exhibition, Angela has explored the vacant museum, itself a vessel of communal memory and history. Now, the blank walls and echoing corridors once home to history are instead filled with memories of what once was, and what is yet to come.

The artist would like to acknowledge the collaboration of Paris Musees and the Musee Carnavalet-Histoire de Paris, the artist would also like to thank L’imprimerie in Montreal for their invaluable assistance.