A Galaxy Reconfigured from the exhibition Open Edition at Carleton University Art Gallery.
A Galaxy Reconfigured (2017)
Installation comprised of historic European prints selected from CUAG’s collection, paper, Mylar, metal cabinets and custom stands.
In A Galaxy Reconfigured, Guillermo Trejo responds to the practical impossibility of accessing or presenting many artworks in a gallery’s large permanent collection. Using map cabinets that galleries use to house works on paper in collection storage, Trejo has created a sculptural installation conceived as a library or galaxy of knowledge.
CUAG’s fourth Collection Invitational artist, Trejo made regular visits to the gallery over the last several months and viewed hundreds of prints. A printmaker and print lover, he was drawn to the precision, detail and subjects of historic French prints in the
W. McAlister Johnson Collection. Through a process of close looking, Trejo identified particular details in these prints, which he offers up to viewers in intriguing, highly personal thematic constellations.
Many of the details that Trejo has chosen to reveal (or conceal) are ones that, given our unfamiliarity with period narratives and symbols and short attention spans, we might overlook. In allowing us to see only small areas of a particular print, Trejo alludes to the impossibility of seeing and understanding the totality of any given artwork or collection.
Heather Anderson, Curator.