Cathedral

Opening reception: Friday, September 8 @ 8PM (part of SWARM 7)

Discussion with Artist: September 9 @ 3PM

Access Gallery is pleased to present Cathedral by Collin Johanson, a project that considers a world of accelerated development, consumption and violence.

This exhibition focuses around the motif of the human skull. With clear reference to the art historical memento mori, Collin Johanson's work contextualizes this age-old signifier within contemporary tensions between the urban and the natural world. A giant wooden skull assembled from found wood and urban detritus, and then documented in photographs, is accompanied by a collection of paintings, drawings and sculptures by Johanson. Paintings of tourists posed in front of an 800 year-old Douglas Fir tree in Vancouver Island's Cathedral Grove Provincial Park are presented alongside works that suggest hobbyist or folk art, and ultimately an earlier time period, whether imagined or real. The exhibition brings to bear contemporary images of fantasy and horror: these are both apocalyptic and spiritually/ socially redemptive meditations.