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Natalie Reis

June 14, 2006
Science Center - Old Port of Montreal
Flavours of the World Gala

July 29-30, 2006
Marché Bonsecours - Old Montréal
11:00 - 6:00

At first glance, my work comes across as delicate yet upon further inspection it becomes obvious to the viewer that the subject matter bears its own weight.  I often combine animal parts or full animals into my work.  I want to portray a dialectic (as well as diaristic) mythology where our animalism is no different from our humanism, in terms of violence and frailty. 

I engage in a dialogue that is tied to a long history concerned with the subject and subjectivity.  In this respect, I seek to return to a reading of subjectivity as understood through existentialist philosophy.  Existentialism stresses the importance of concrete individual existence and, consequently, on subjectivity, claiming that human beings do not have a fixed nature, or essence, because of one’s ability to make choices which in turn creates his or her nature.  Individuality and subjectivity are not states to be achieved, but rather constant processes of coming to be. 

I aim to explore representational procedures through which subjectivity can be formulated and preconceptions challenged.  I am, therefore, interested less in how art and society form subjects and more in the way aesthetics might instigate processes; processes which can expand our contemporary perspectives on subjectivity. 

I view the subject as a learned social entity that is continually shifting.  Formally, this shifting is represented in my work through the repetition of figures that slowly morph into their next shape.  Furthermore, these images depict states of in-betweeness - figures between life and death, between figuration and abstraction.  I feel there is integrity in instability and ambiguity, which is inherent in states of in-betweeness.  The figures I portray are between subjectivity - standing between a theoretical, artificial and socially constructed body versus a piece of matter that sickens and dies. 

My work rests on an ongoing research of the body, matter and being.   

http://www.nataliereis.com

 

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