Ed Pien has been modifying and adapting his basic vocabulary of installation elements for several years now. Drawings of vaguely mythical crea- tures and characters form the figurative core, while the drawings' translucent paper supports are installed as architectural elements in their own right rather than mounted on walls. Recently, video projections and audio components have complemented the drawings' tactile ethereality.
His most recent exhibition, Celestial Bodies, was installed in the Davies
Foundation Gallery of the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, a room approach- ing the static proportions of a cube. Pien oriented his glassine-paper draw- ing support as a kind of drop ceiling angling down from a point near the gallery ceiling on the entrance side to a point four feet
…show more content…
The video imagery is non-figurative and looks like a close rescanning off a video monitor. It is accompanied by an audio track of vaguely ambient nocturnal sounds that suggest insect life. The viewer who overcomes typical concerns about gallery decorum can crouch down and eventually stand up on reaching the opening. Above the glassine ceiling one sees the other half of the gallery, which is very much a behind-the-scenes environment, showing the archi- tectural struts and lines supporting the glassine membrane, wiring, the mounted video projector, the gallery lights and so on.
The celestial bodies themselves are a real strength of the exhibition.
Everything about them is difficult to categorize and identify Some are winged, some aren't. What the body parts are, where they begin and end and how they attach are never clear, suggesting a constant process of transmutation, or an other-worldliness scarcely recognizable in our own.
The glassine ceiling, being both atmosphere and material support,