DIANNE BOS "Perception," January 22 to February 26, 2011, Newzones Gallery, Calgary

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"Leaves Under a Negative Landscape, Italy (2)"

Dianne Bos, "Leaves Under a Negative Landscape, Italy," gesso, gouache, photogram, solarized photogram, pinhole photograph negative on watercolour paper, 2010.

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"Tree and Chandelier graft, Italy"

Dianne Bos, "Tree and Chandelier graft, Italy," gesso, gouache, photogram, solarized photogram, pinhole photograph negative on watercolour paper, 2010.

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"Leaves Under a Negative Landscape, Italy (2)"

Dianne Bos, "Leaves Under a Negative Landscape, Italy," gesso, gouache, photogram, solarized photogram, pinhole photograph negative on watercolour paper, 2010.

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"Leaves Under a Negative Landscape, Italy"

Dianne Bos, "Leaves Under a Negative Landscape, Italy," gesso, gouache, photogram, solarized photogram, pinhole photograph negative on watercolour paper, 2010.

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DIANNE BOS

Perception, January 22 to February 26, Newzones Gallery, Calgary

BY: Katherine Ylitalo

At Newzones, Dianne Bos debuts three unexpected collage/drawings of trees in Perception, a group exhibition that coincides with Exposure 2011, the Calgary/Banff Photography Festival.

Bos splits her time between France and Calgary. In June 2010, she traveled to the hill town of Monte Castello di Vibio in Italy, where she often teaches pinhole photography at the art school there. She took square-format pinhole photographs of interiors, creating warm, haunting images, but she also embarked on something new. Bos returned to painting, which she studied 30 years ago at Mount Allison University. Returning to that technique, she was effectively allowing herself to be a student again, resulting in an outpouring of some 20 works on paper.

In the resulting collage/drawings, Bos joins the real and the imagined, combines the languages of photography and painting, conflates notions of abstraction and representation, and conjures up subtle, magical trees. The work recalls a stop along the Silk Route, where a delicate relief carving of a mysterious tree borders the victorious image of the Sassanian king, Khosrau II. The 1500-year-old rock carving is thought to be a composite of various plants — a leaf from one tree, a branching habit from another, and sections from the imagination of the sculptor. Together, the disparate parts make up a sacred tree of life, adorning the largest grotto overlooking the reflecting pool and heralding many hybrid fantasies to come.

With the aid of a handmade shoebox pinhole camera, Bos captured images that convey the texture of bark, and the calligraphic quality of old coniferous trees in a park near the villa. She collected the tip of a branch with broad leaves and a cluster of small dried poppies from the roadside to make photograms back in the darkroom. There, she used the same technique of exposing objects directly on photosensitive paper that was first used in the 19th century to make images of plant material and lace.

The works invite a close look, revealing the visual game Bos set for herself, to arrange and graft the photographic tree parts, enhance their graphic qualities — the play of dark and light, blur and focus — and envelope them in a painted atmosphere. Some visual stand-ins add to the fun: an upside-down chandelier becomes the crown of a tree (Tree and Chandelier graft, Italy, 2010) and the linear stems ending in round seedpods make for quirky roots (Leaves under a Negative Landscape, Italy, 2010). As Bos brushed on coats of chalky white gesso, scratching through it and staining it while it was still wet with smudges of ochre pastel, blushes of pink pigment and bruises of Payne’s grey gouache, she took care to leave areas where the silvered surface of the photographic paper could glow.

These works are direct responses to materials at a particular time and place. There’s a feeling that Bos was able to turn off any internal editor, forget about the frame and simply make things.

You can find more art by Bos in Calgary this season. Her sumptuous, black and white silver gelatin pinhole photographs, Vache (Glorious Ariegois) and Flooded Seine, Paris, France, 2003 are on view on the second level of the Jubilee Auditorium, as part of a thoughtful new presentation from the collection of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts. The winter/spring banners flanking Calgary’s bridges are also her designs — black and white double-exposures of sky, trees and water smartly mirrored, reversed and suffused with colour.