COMBINE 2012: Annual Undergraduate Student Exhibition
Author: Aditi Ohri
Artist: Jessica Monuk
Jessica Monuk, right: Untitled(fence), 2011, sculpture, found materials, copper pipes; left: Untitled(fransference), 2011, sculpture, loop armateure, found materials. Photo: Guy L'Heureux
About the artist
Jessica Monuk is interested in durable materials. Untitled(fence) and Untitled(transference) are artworks that can be folded, thrown, and manipulated in an endless stream of possibilities. They are meant to be interacted with and remain open to constant (re)interpretation. The shapes and structures of both pieces are crisp, clean, and minimalist in their presentation, betraying nothing of the relatively messy and involved process that lead to their construction. Though Untitled(transference) is a found object, Monuk cut and folded pages from 3 phone books to construct the dexterous and manoeuvrable structure of Untitled(fence). She never pays for her materials, and explains that most of her pieces begin as discoveries made in recycling bins. The plumbing tubes suspending both works can attest to this fact.
Together, the two pieces construct a binary set of oppositions. Whereas Untitled(transference) is one continuous readymade piece of material, Untitled(fence) is material that has been sculpted and formed in a tireless process to create a substance that is spring-like and versatile. The pieces respond differently to touch, light, and one another. By injecting adaptability into the piece and allowing for the objects to be rearranged by gallery visitors, Monuk relinquishes interpretive and aesthetic control of the pieces once they are on display. Ideas of inertia/activity, static/dynamic, order/chaos, control/abandon, and material/conceptual influence the viewer’s spectrum of experiences with the work.
As the pieces can be moved, the artist invites the viewer to physically experience the materials; participation is encouraged, but not demanded. This offers the viewer a choice, as if tacitly winking towards the viewer’s complicity within the hierarchy of the art institution, implying that passivity can be a preference and perhaps a statement unto itself. The reference to this power dynamic is reminiscent of relational aesthetic sculptural practices, such as that of Felix Gonzales-Torres, wherein the audience’s participation is an essential component to the artwork on display. The artwork is never truly completed, as it is engaging in a constant interaction with its audience.
The materiality of the work alongside its conceptual interworking places it on a continuum of responses to the legacy of Minimalism. Just as Donald Judd intended to display a particular material and invite an audience to consider its multivalent meaning, Monuk invites the viewer to consider her materials’ protean nature. In her process, she is driven by inexplicable impulses and tendencies that guide her inspiration, motivation, and confusion. With Untitled(fence) and Untitled(transference), Monuk brings materiality to the forefront by expressing new ways of seeing, interacting, and associating meaning with objects. Playing with conventional notions of sculpture, she gracefully gestures towards the expressive, expansive, and emotive possibilities of form.
Biographies
Aditi Ohri
Aditi Ohri is interested in collective consciousness, pop culture, and power. Her aesthetic interests range from dollar-store notebooks to Buddhist Japanese sculpture. Her underlying goal is political. She approaches art from the perspective of a young radical desperate for change, seeking to understand the various ways in which culture is continuously constructed and destroyed. She is in her second year at Concordia.
Jessica Monuk
Jessica Monuk is in her final year at Concordia and will be graduating this spring with a BFA in Studio Arts and Art History. Residing from both west and east regions of Canada, mediums that interest her are sculpture and non-traditional drawing. Paired with the concept that objects might be designated rather than made, Jessica is influenced by methods of interaction demonstrated through the Minimalism and Relational Aesthetics movements.
