KRISTI MALAKOFF, "Flourish," Sept 16 – Nov 13, 2005, Art Gallery of the South Okanagan, (now Penticton Art Gallery), Penticton

×

1 of 3

Expand

"Orchard"

Kristi Malakoff, "Orchard," 2005.

×

2 of 3

Expand

"Garden"

Kristi Malakoff, "Garden," 2005.

×

3 of 3

Expand

"Orchard"

Kristi Malakoff, "Orchard," 2005.

Prev

Next

KRISTI MALAKOFF, Flourish

Art Gallery of the South Okanagan, Penticton

Sept 16 – Nov 13, 2005

By Portia Priegert

A fascination with miniatures and multitudes has blossomed into a whimsical garden of delights under the steady hand of Vancouver-based artist Kristi Malakoff, who obsessively cuts and pastes imagery from quotidian fare such as wallpaper and gardening books to create profuse large-scale installations.

Walking into Flourish, in the main exhibition space at the Art Gallery of the South Okanagan, one is greeted by a flamboyant bed of flowers. But trompe l’oeil is at work here. A closer approach to Garden (2005) reveals the flowers are paper cutouts. Photocopied from guidebooks, each is carefully trimmed and glued to a short small-gauge wire, a leafless stem attached to the concrete floor in a garden without greenery. Hummingbirds, also photocopied, are attached to longer wires, seeming to hover in mid-flight above the flowers. The effect is one of playful abandon, yet there is formal satisfaction in the juxtaposition of linear wires and organic shapes.

To the rear of Garden is Orchard (2005), which on closer inspection is revealed as a surreal amalgamation. The trunk and branches of six real apple trees are covered with leaves and, in seasonal impossibility, both fruit and flowers — all harvested from wallpaper. A 20-foot-wide spread of source material is suspended behind the trees, its missing pattern evidence of Malakoff’s painstaking labour.

Across the gallery is Swarm (2004) a collection of some 6,000 butterflies, photocopied on to transparencies and then cut out, folded and glued to the wall. Wings glinting as if caught in a shaft of sunlight, they are posed not as specimens but as living creatures.

In stark contrast to the abundance of these works, Malakoff also presents Ornithological Series (2004) a series of miniature dioramas created from Canadian paper money. A kingfisher, for instance, is excised from a $5 bill and posed by his marsh, familiar, yet oddly elusive. It was by snipping up money that Malakoff, who graduated from the Emily Carr Institute in Vancouver at the top of her class in the spring, made her breakthrough. Initially inspired by the British miniature tradition she saw while an exchange student at the Chelsea College of Art in London, she blended it with the expansiveness of the Canadian imagination. Her stated aim is to give depth back to the two-dimensional representational imagery that surrounds us and to transport audiences visually and emotionally to fantastical places that alternate between reality and façade.

Malakoff’s oeuvre is yet a little unsettled with eye-candy appeal at odds with more cerebral work. Indeed, her weakest point is her relatively undeveloped conceptual base — she is yet to develop a mature dialogue about her work’s relationship to craft, production, spectacle and the items of popular culture she literally dissects. But Malakoff is off to a promising start with several shows already under her belt, and a group exhibition, Proximities: Artists’ Statements and Their Works, at the Kamloops Art Gallery from October 16 to December 31.