Gordon Snelgrove Gallery
Department of Art and Art History
Gallery Hours: Monday – Friday 9:30am – 4:30pm
October 28 – November 7, 2014
Reception: November 7, 7 ! 10pm
Maia Stark
SelfSame
In this exhibition of paintings, drawings and light boxes, Maia Stark explores the rich and sometimes
uncomfortable implications of the double. An identical twin herself, she paints portraits with
doppelgängers that evoke the instability of identity and ultimately her own subjecthood.
The eminent Art Historian, Rosalind Krauss identified doubling as a key operation in Surrealist
defamiliarization. “The double,” she writes, “destroys the pure singularity of the first,” and by
unhinging the primacy of the original, a new, more fluid space is created. But while that space is open
and hybrid, it is also uncanny because it is characterized by difference and uncertainty.
Stark’s sensitive touch provides a soothing entrance to intimate scenes that are, in the end, disquieting.
Childhood memories are woven together with dreams of animals and doubled figures to tell stories
that are both poignant and unsettling.
Reception: Friday November 7, 7 ! 10pm
Contact the gallery for press photos and further information
Marcus Miller, Gordon Snelgrove Gallery Director
191 Murray Bldg., University of Saskatchewan, 3 Campus Dr., Saskatoon SK, S7N 5A4
306-966-4208 gordon.snelgrove@usask.ca www.usask.ca/snelgrove