HO TAM "Fine China"
JEANNE RANDOLPH "Pythagoras of the Prairies"
May 16 - June 21, 2025
Reception Friday May 16, 7-10pm
Paul Petro Contemporary Art is pleased to present Ho Tam "Fine China" (2000-2025) and Jeanne Randolph "Pythagoras of the Prairies". Both exhibitions are in co-partnership with the CONTACT Photography Festival.
From Ho Tam:
"Fine China" is an exploration of China's past and present with a different take on issues within and outside a country of growing influence in the present day, with a collection of 24 photographs based on re-designed porcelains ( fine china ) with banal and iconic / ironic images. It is a search for China's identity in the new millennium.
The video "Fine China" (2000, running time 8:33) transcribes a collection of found and original footage into a display of the original 22 re-designed porcelains that form the basis for the photographs, including images of panda bears, Jackie Chan, Mao and MacDonald's. In a way, the video is a search for China's identity in the new millennium.
Retracing personal and collective memories, "Fine China" provides an alternative perspective for an aging civilization as it re-invents itself into a possible super power of the future. The photographs capture these images from the video and include newer images such as the corona virus to further reflect the current moment. The photographs are also gathered into Hotam Press publications: "Fine China" (the magazine, 2014) and "Fine China" (the newspaper, 2023).
From Jeanne Randolph:
"The soul of the pre-Socratic Ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras transmigrates into a variety of beings, many of which dwell on the Canadian prairies. Emblematic of each individual being’s circumstance a photograph documents an unintended or ephemeral triangular form comprised of objects, of sunbeams of a shadow, or enigmatic combinations of these.
"Most of the sites are unidentifiable, and many of them rather indecipherable concatenations of shade, shapes and rays of light. The intensely saturated colour images seem perhaps to be the consequence of the artist’s irresistible compulsion to perceive triangles anywhere and everywhere.
"In spite of the laconic philosophical or psychoanalytic phrases that Pythagoras recites in his life as a bug for instance, or as a lizard, a Gimli maiden, even as a cucumber, each situation is absurd and impossible. There is an nihilistic implication regarding human understanding, mirrored in the ambiguity and uninformative imagery of each photograph.
"The series ends with Pythagoras recounting the details of a dream, a disillusioning conversation between a young Professor of English Literature and Sigmund Freud (who acknowledges he has already been dead more than 80 years and is curious to learn about twenty-first century public life)."
"Pythagoras of the Prairies" completes Randolph's trilogy - her ode to Winnipeg. A new publication by Flask Editions accompanies the exhibition.
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