Opening reception: November 1, 8pm

Batia Suter’s images are drawn from a vast collection of over 1,000 publications including art and history books, atlases, scientific journals, and magazines that the artist has gathered over decades. Extracting reproductions from these diverse source materials, Suter repurposes the pictures into books and for exhibitions. Stripped of their past contexts and as factual information, the photographs develop surprising new associations as part of their new, eclectic constellations.  Once enlarged, the digitally-manipulated images are printed at low resolution to emphasize visual systems through the surface textures of analogue reproduction. Primarily employing images of the natural world, the installation is an iteration of Suter’s major bookwork Parallel Encyclopedia #2 (2016) which is also on display in the gallery. The artist unravels notions of any kind of encyclopedic order of things and instead, proposes a “parallel” and poetic version of visual evidence. Here, the meanings of photographic images are unstable and their perpetual state of flux suggests the excess and chaos of today’s digital proliferation of images.

TOURS

Tours of Parallel Encyclopedia Extended will be hosted every Saturday at 2PM. To join the tour, meet at the ground floor lobby at 1:55PM. These tours are recommended for general visitors as an introduction to the exhibition.

For a more tailored experience, visitors are encouraged to book a private guided tour with a member of our curatorial team. For more information about private tours, visit the Contact Us page, or email tours@thepolygon.ca.

Events

Friday, November 2 at 7:30pm | A Conversation with Batia Suter and Helga Pakasaar

Image: Batia Suter, Parallel Encyclopedia #2, Roma Publications, 2016