Oeuvres récentes | New works

For the first time, Galerie Trois Points presents the work of Michele Peress. Her work incorporates a series of images and objects that explore notions of indeterminacy and liminality relating to concerns with materiality, process and form. The first component of the work is a series of sculptural objects comprised entirely of knitted and sewn human hair. The hair used in this project is a combination of her hair as well as human hair purchased from commercial sources. With this work, she is interested in the integration of the personal and the anonymous, an underlying thematic concern in this work. Her preoccupation with hair as a workable corporeal material derives in part from research into the processing of human hair, predominantly women’s hair, as a byproduct of the “Final Solution” carried out by the Nazi Regime during World War II.   Human hair collected from inmates at the Nazi concentration camps was utilized by the Germans for the manufacture of hair-felt stockings, supplied to employees of the Reich Railways.The second component of this work is a series of large-scale ink-jet prints. Using a large format scanner, the forms are scanned at high resolution. The digital image is enlarged and subtly altered so that selected areas of detail are emphasized, while other areas are suppressed. The objective of this procedure is to explore the capacity of the printed image to develop a highly complex surface, one that renders discernible detail (at the level of minutia), as well as, unbounded depth.

Ultimately this work cultivates an extensive exploration of a non-traditional material and the development of an innovative and highly detailed hand made process. Questioning the potential mutability of an art object, this project explores the capacity of a hand- labored object to be significantly transformed by new digital technologies. It incorporates a series of enigmatic and oneiric objects/prints that aims to incite within the viewer a visceral engagement with the work, inspire an original and pre-formalized experience, and evoke a mood of privacy, haunting introspection and silent reprieve

Michele Peress is presently completing a Masters of Fine Arts at Concordia University. She has presented her work in group shows at Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery(Montreal) and at Maison de la culture Côte-des-Neiges(Montreal) both in 2005, at Gallery FSS (Oakland, California) in 2003, at Exposure Gallery (Vancouver) in 2003, in New York and in San Francisco in 2001 and in Seattle in 2000.

Press release