Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art is pleased to host the opening reception of Unreliable Sightings of… by Nat Chard and Perry Kulper and launch Nature Falls by Nicolas Sassoon on Friday, July 3rd at 7:00 pm. The event is free and all are welcome.

Unreliable Sightings of…by Nat Chard and Perry Kulper 

Unreliable Sightings of… is an exhibition of Chard and Kulper’s recent collaborative work, which includes individual projects that have contributed to their shared fascinations with architecture that is contingent and indeterminate, challenging architectural tendencies to predict how spaces are used. Their design efforts range from the production of drawing instruments, photography, manual drawings and digitally produced images that leverage uncertainty and latency through relational thinking and generative production. They frequently work with taboo areas in architecture, engaging the uncelebrated and marginalized places of more normative practices with the intention to reframe habits, teasing out fresh ways of implicating themselves, and others, in the world.

Both architects use drawing as a process and means of discovery but their working methods and outcomes are quite distinct. Chard constructs instruments that make drawings. The instruments produce complex splattered drawings that challenge the certainties of perspective constructions , opening questions about authorship while valuing the potential of unpredictable results. Chard’s instruments maintain a tensional play between controlled and indeterminate outcomes, probing the possibilities of world-making in which the author is implicated in making sense of the fragmentary evidence.

Kulper makes mostly hand-made drawings that search for a resonance between content and form. Varied ideas motivate the specific direction of each piece of work including familiar strangeness, split temporalities, ambiguity and suggestiveness. Diverse design methods are utilized alongside tailored drawings, searching for broadened conceptions of architecture- all obsessively worked to avoid the “temptations of reduction” and to discover the cultural agency and spatial potential of architecture.

Their collaboration is grounded in generative speculations – in a game of what ifs and maybes, searching, like detectives at a crime scene for evidence, reconstructing the scene. Their working techniques and methods come together as they seek contingent architectures that invite broadened engagement, offering a range of spatial and experiential possibility.

Kulper works from his basement in Ann Arbor, Michigan, while Chard works from his studio garage in Brighton, UK. They collaborate mainly through correspondence that includes project specific exchanges as well as more general conversation on how space elicits behavior.  At best their discussions contaminate each other’s works – non-sequiturs, hunches and flat-out shots in the dark are mixed with intended and disciplined inputs, infiltrating the thinking of one another.  The collaborative work presented is generated from discussions as well as aspects that deviate through mis-readings of transmission and translation. Kulper and Chard are both interested in nurturing conditions where those who engage with architecture are implicated in making sense of an assembly of ideas and the emergent spatial possibilities- rather than capitulating to architecture that controls outcomes.

Nature Falls by Nicolas Sassoon 

Nature Falls is a serial exhibition of digital works by Nicolas Sassoon. Throughout the summer of 2015, Plug In ICA will present a selection of Sassoon’s work beginning with Out My Window #1, a black and white digital animation of zigzagging black bands moving across a patterned field. We start with a window as a screen from which four of his other works can be seen, including Red Sea, Sunny Lands, Green Waves, and Liquid Gold, a new work produced for his exhibition at Plug In ICA.

Sassoon is recognized for his digital animation, which he presents and distributes online, as well as for his projections that create immersive installations which respond to architectural space, both articulating and fabricating the built environment. In all of Sassoon’s work there is an embrace of early video technology and graphics — a counting and annunciation of pixels if you will, but it isn’t a nostalgic look back as much as a desire to represent complex forms and phenomena by minimal means.

Nature Falls is a selection of Sassoon’s work that represents the natural environment from the landscape to meteorological occurrences. The artist often uses nature as his subject matter, capturing the movement of the ocean as it hits the shore or the rain falling on a window, through a layering of distinct pixelated colours. Each saturated square retains its individual shape but it is amassed to create a graphic digital pattern that replicates the movement of organic forms. Just as the flow of a waterfall can mesmerize, Sassoon’s animations form hypnotic fields. Through the window, and in Sassoon’s case, the computer screen, he sets himself and the viewer outside into a plane of movement and colour.

For each consecutive work presented Plug In ICA has invited writers and artists, including Andrew Berardini, Jinhan Ko, Alex Snukal, and Alex Quicho to respond to the individual works presented as part of Nature Falls. The responses will be published online as each work is launched.

Plug In ICA gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Manitoba Arts Council, Winnipeg Arts Council and the RBC Foundation as well as our generous donors, valued members and dedicated volunteers.

For general information please contact: info@plugin.org

For media inquiries please contact: Janique Vigier at janique@plugin.org or by telephone at (204) 942-104 ext 27.