Plug In ICA continues to present Nature Falls, a serial exhibition of digital works by Nicolas Sassoon on our monitor wall. As part of our public programs in conjunction with Sassoon’s exhibition, we have invited artists and writers, Alex Snukal, Alex Quicho, Tiziana La Melia, Jinhan Ko and Andrew Berardini, to respond individually to one of the five animations in the exhibition. The responses, which are intended to be immediate and somewhat poetic, will take a variety of forms from textual narratives or critical readings to sound works, drawing, photograph, etc. with the stipulation that they be presented online.

Artist and writer Tiziana La Melia is the fourth to respond to Sassoon’s solo exhibition Nature Falls, specifically to Green Waves, produced by Sassoon in New Orleans as an allusion of the Mississippi River’s destructive force. La Melia’s response takes the form of a written text, in which she follows two corresponding tangents, between the minutiae of a pond’s ecosystem as a mirror of a bodiless narrator. Much like Beatriz Preciado’s Testo Junkie, which La Melia references, the writing takes on a performative element that plays out as slow mundane inferences of place, settings where everything is masked with symbolism in a code to be deciphered. The narrative shares the elusive quality of certain nightmares from childhood: images so familiar they become strangely comforting.

The responses are framed together with Sassoon’s exhibition accumulating over the coming months. To view Sassoon’s artwork and La Melia’s written response please follow the link:http://nicolassassoon.com/NATURE_FALLS.html

On Monday, September 21st, Plug In ICA will be launching Liquid Gold,  a new work by Sassoon. Los Angles based art critic Andrew Berardini will be responding to the animation by Friday, September 25^th.

Nature Falls is a selection of Nicolas 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.

BIOS: Tiziana La Melia is an interdisciplinary artist who lives and works in Vancouver, British Columbia. Her work with both painting and text delicately combines figuration with the abstract. In past exhibitions, her use of mixed materials and vivid colour has explored personal narratives and female archetypes, with direct references to icons such as Janis Joplin and Joan of Arc through to Joyce Carol Oates. La Melia’s work articulates various forms of encounter: with language, affect, subject, materials, and space. She received her MFA from the University of Guelph in 2011 and BFA from Emily Carr University of Art and Design in 2008. Recent and upcoming exhibition venues include Francois Ghebaly, Los Angeles; Cooper Cole, Toronto; Mercer Union, Toronto; CSA, Vancouver, Macaulay & Co. Fine Arts, Vancouver; The Apartment, Vancouver; Western Front, Vancouver, and SBC Galerie, Montreal. In 2014, she was the Writer in Residence at TPW R&D, Toronto. She is the 2014 winner of the RBC Painting Competition and was longlisted for the 2015 Sobey award.

Nicolas 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. Sassoon has exhibited internationally at venues and events such as the 319 Scholes, New York; May Gallery, New Orleans; Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; PRETEEN Gallery, Madrid; the Centre d’Art Bastille Grenoble, France; Arti et Amicitiae, Amsterdam; Victoria & Albert Museum London, UK, and Today Art Museum, Beijing, China. Often collaborating with other artists, architects, music producers, and fashion designers, he is also a member of the online collective Computers Club and a founder of the collective W-A-L-L-P-A-P-E-R-S.

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.