an endless, formless ruin by Jessica Thalmann
Such Places as Memory (Seattle I)
Folded archival pigment print, unique
22" x 17"
ANGELL GALLERY is pleased to present Toronto-based artist and Akin MOCA member Jessica Thalmann’s second solo exhibition at the gallery. Titled an endless, formless ruin, the exhibition presents new photographs and photo-based sculptural works, and opens on Saturday, May 4, with the public reception and artist talk on Saturday, May 11 from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. The exhibition runs until Saturday, June 1.
It is the desperate moment when we discover that this empire, which had seemed to us the sum of all wonders, is an endless, formless ruin…
— Italo Calvino: Invisible Cities (1972)
In the novella Invisible Cities, we find about fifty short impressions of mythical cities relayed to the Mongolian emperor Kublai Khan by the Italian explorer Marco Polo. Polo describes the different sensory, physical and psychological affects these cities have on their inhabitants, which have been interpreted as different aspects of one city – Venice. But, ultimately, the book is about more than a single city; rather, it raises ideas about what it means for a city to be ‘home’, and how we can feel either ‘in possession’ or ‘possessed’ by a place through our memories and experiences of it. Polo is the book’s main narrator, but we sympathize with Khan, a man who can’t rule his homeland effectively because he doesn’t truly understand it.
Jessica Thalmann is an artist, curator and writer currently based in Toronto and New York City. She received a Master of Fine Arts in Advanced Photographic Studies from ICP-Bard College and a BFA in Visual Arts from York University. She has worked at the Doris McCarthy Gallery, Toronto International Film Festival, C Magazine, the Art Gallery of York University and Yossi Milo Gallery.