JENNIFER STILLWELL, December 12, 2008 to January 24, 2009, Plug-In Institute of Contemporary Art, Winnipeg

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"Dock and Propeller (detail)"

Jennifer Stillwell, "Dock and Propeller (detail)," 2004, fans, power cord.

JENNIFER STILLWELL

Plug-In Institute of Contemporary Art, Winnipeg

December 12, 2008 to January 24, 2009

By Stacey Abramson

After graduating from the Masters program at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2005, Winnipeg-based artist Jennifer Stillwell has been showing across the globe, garnering an excellent reputation — she was a Sobey Art Award semi-finalist in both 2002 and 2006. In 2006 she was commissioned by the Winnipeg Arts Council to create a permanent public art piece near the intersection where the Red and Assiniboine Rivers meet — a massive and exciting project for a conceptual artist like Stillwell. For this newest self-titled exhibition at Plug-In, she uses installation, sculpture and wall works to connect home, banality and movement. From truck grills used as tools in clay to thousands of Slurpee cup labels transferred onto a canvas, the works further her conceptual language. Stillwell’s work reaches beyond the gallery walls, letting viewers imagine spaces and times outside of the exhibition, and while this is something that many artists strive to do, Stillwell looks at the idea of escape in a different way. She encourages viewers to step into an industrial-themed domestic sphere, creating a strange tension between the comforting and the sterile, the present and the past.

Represented by: The Pari Nadimi Gallery, Toronto.