still not holding up your end of the deal

Communiqué/Press Release:

STILL NOT HOLDING UP YOUR END OF THE DEAL
January 22-February 3, 2007
VAV Gallery
1395 RENE LEVESQUE W.
MONTREAL, QUEBEC
Vernissage: January 23, 2007 7pm

“It doesn’t really work like that; I make things naturally, progressively. Organically. They grow. They are not chapters, all set and already written. Those come later. Once the whole story has happened at least once.” –Romy Ceppetelli





Still Not Holding Up Your End of the Deal brings together two Montreal artists, Romy Ceppetelli and Kim Kielhofner, who have been collaborating together for three years. Using the sketchbook as the initial place for exercising communication, the artists have worked to create two unique bodies of work with these sketchbooks as their backbone. Starting with the simple premise of “taking up space” the work has expanded into a dense and intricate collection that extends beyond traditional art bounds. The books can be read as documents, records, maps, sketches and/or complete works in themselves. Through this practice the artists have created a personal iconography, history, and memory that is in constant conversation with itself and the world they inhabit. Still Not Holding Up Your End of the Deal is an exhibition of works inspired by this process. The exhibition will have a selection of the books, as well as new works including drawings, videos and installations. The vernissage on January 23, 2007 will feature a discussion of the work as well as performances by other Montreal artists.

Romy Ceppetelli; re-collecting

This work stems out of my collections; I collect the things that I feel are important and beautiful - the fragments of life, of my life and the lives of others. I am looking for what to keep and what to throw away, what to remember and what to forget. My process is one of building up and tearing down. I am interested in representing the cycles of things, the breaking and creating. Trying to figure out what comes after so much destruction and decay. We need to remember and forget, that is what humans do. Like skin, like paper, like metal. I want to expose the boundaries of things, to let things pass. To collect, to forget, to re-collect. Recordar: to remember; from the Latin re-cordis, to pass back through the heart.


Kim Kielhofner

Central to my way of working is the question, "what can you do with what you have?" -- using what I have around me to stretch my practice. My work is rooted in an everyday process, which allows my work not to be pinned down before it is created but rather is generated through the trajectories and strategies of everyday living. The process is an invention in which the self is put into social and historical processes, but not in a totalizing way. Through the repetitive practices of projecting the self into an overriding narrative, the self performs in a space that cannot be clearly identified. Collecting images everyday and letting the narrative elements collect is part of this process that allows for ambiguity and fluidity, allowing a collapse between self and other. The work invites an engagement, but also presents elements of a fragmented narrative, which asks, "What is really going on here?" In that question, one journeys through one's sensory perception and memory, horror and relief, violence and innocence, and the possibility that both sets of options are present.

Contact:
Romy Ceppetelli
romyceppetelli@yahoo.ca
Kim Kielhofner
kim.kielhofner@gmail.com