Localize Affect

September 19 to November 2, 2024
Opening: September 19, 5 to 8 PM.

Bradley Ertaskiran is pleased to present Localize Affect, a solo exhibition by Berlin-based Canadian artist Jeremy Shaw. Building on the artist’s ongoing interest around representations of the intangible and profound, Localize Affect showcases the physical side of Shaw’s multifaceted practice. Here, notions of transcendence and devotion manifest through a visual lexicon of glass, steel, light, and shadow. 

In the gallery’s Main Space, Shaw’s bespoke stained-glass sculptures (Maximum Horizon) meld precision and logic with the spiritual and the profane. Made using traditional techniques of mouth-blown glass and lead combined with vibrant color gradients, the artworks and their shadow play replicate the awe and majesty of religious iconography. Historical stained-glass windows were often seen from a distance, out of reach but in elevated proximity to godliness. Shaw’s work is made according to the same divine and transformative principles of light, but experienced up close, not unlike staring into a screen. The works’ single-point perspective designs recall ubiquitous representations of vortexes, portals, and digital horizons, found in science fiction, pop culture, and spiritual imagery alike to suggest the transition from one state, one reality, or one existence, to another. They beckon the viewer forward towards the unknown, the infinite.

The gallery’s outer walls showcase photographic prisms from Shaw’s Towards Universal Pattern Recognition series. Culled from newspaper archives, the original press images show individuals in varying states of spiritual, psychological, and technological transformation: outstretched hands clasped in fervent devotion; a spell-bound crowd encircling the screen of an early computer; an exasperated man lying on the floor in a meditative release. Custom-cut prism lenses magnify and repeat the photographs beneath; a psychedelic skewing of historical pictures that seem to question the veracity of the documentary image as a form of testimony itself. Viewed in the round, with no two perspectives alike, the refracted lenses bend light into a kaleidoscope effect that amplifies the subjects’ catharsis; the events appear otherworldly and theatrical despite their archival source. Be it through the promise of transformative technology or spiritual discovery, Shaw’s artworks map, distort, animate, and extend these records of perceived human transcendence beyond the frame. 

The multimedia sculpture Untitled (There In Spirit) is a manifestation of devotion through the spectacle of light. Occupying the tomb-like Bunker space, the steel stand holds a bank of 156 electric votive candles encased in red glass. The result is hypnotic: a seemingly random arrangement of electric flames flicker intermittently at first, then slowly evolve into an oscillating tunnel pattern that consumes the entire grid, its speed gaining towards infinity. Time seems suspended as we fixate on this endless echoing of synthetic flickering candlelight. The sculpture borrows the monumentality of a memorial or altar, carrying with it an inherent tone of contemplation and mourning, yet also exudes that nameless, mesmerizing pull that draws us to sites of worship and devotion, both old and new, spiritual and technological. If Shaw’s larger artistic practice, especially his film work, delves into intangible transcendence, then here, ubiquitous faith is materialized through light, shadow, and sound; a physical accumulation of prayer, of piety, of hope.

Jeremy Shaw (b. 1977, North Vancouver, BC) lives and works in Berlin, Germany. Shaw’s recent presentations include the Hamburger Bahnhof (Berlin), Deichtorhallen (Hamburg), Centre Pompidou (Paris), MoMA PS1 (New York), Schinkel Pavillon (Berlin), MOCA (Toronto) and MAC (Montreal), and he has been featured in international surveys such as the 57th Venice Biennale, 16th Lyon Biennale and Manifesta 11, Zurich. In 2016 he was awarded the Sobey Art Award and was artist-in-residence at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles in 2018. Works by Shaw are held in public collections worldwide including the Museum of Modern Art (New York), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Tate Modern (London), and the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa).

To consult the artist’s profile, please click here.