Vessel

Derya Akay, Fabiola Carranza, Mark DeLong, and Lucien Durey

4 to 26 May 2012

Opening Reception: Thursday May 3, 2012 8pm

Access Gallery proudly presents Vessel, a group exhibition showcasing the works of four Vancouver-based artists; Derya Akay, Fabiola Carranza, Mark DeLong, and Lucien Durey. Questioning our tendency to immediately allegorize objects through their superficial and surface qualities, Vessel interrogates the aura of objects. Each artist playfully disrupts our preconceived notions of objects’ objecthood. Through material play they transform the expected and everyday into something mysterious and magical. Like cherished childhood films where animated sorcerers bring broomsticks to life or fairies turn pumpkins into carriages, the artists of Vessel transform our immediate perceptions of inanimate things.

Derya Akay’s subtle and organic installations are an optical feast for the eyes. Akay meticulously constructs multi-layered 3d assemblages; organizing mirrors, glass, paint, handmade ceramics, and various other materials into complex arrangements. Fabiola Carranza enlivens the inanimate. Her latest sculptural work evokes the past lives of five chairs. The metal body of each one is bent and contorted to complete a transformation from ubiquitous discarded material into the rarefied dances of school time boogie woogies. Mark DeLong’s paintings and ceramic works bring the raw intensity and energy of his earlier zines and drawings; now made even more powerful through the histories that clay, paint, and stretched canvas evoke. Finally, Lucien Durey blurs the line between artifact and artifice. Influenced by his father's life and obsession with the arctic, Durey's assemblages draw from popular and personal narrative in an attempt to convey a transcendent experience of place.

 

Derya Akay (b. Istanbul, Turkey) received his BFA from Emily Carr University in 2010 and currently lives in Vancouver, BC. Akay has had a solo project at Blanket Contemporary Art Inc. store front in collaboration with The Apartment Gallery, Vancouver. Akay has participated in various exhibitions including; Serial Abstracts, The Commons, Vancouver (2012); Aviary, Small Gallery, Vancouver (2011); The Problem of Nothing, Hayaka ARTI, Istanbul, (2011); Office Hours, Fillip Office, Vancouver (2011),Contemporary Histories: Intersecting pasts and future, AHVA Gallery, UBC, Vancouver (2011); Hand Joy, Centre for Recent Drawing, London, UK (2010) and the International Chilliwack Biennial (2010).

Fabiola Carranza (b. San José, Costa Rica) is an interdisciplinary artist living in Vancouver, BC. In 2006, she received a Bachelor in Media Art from Emily Carr University. Since then, Carranza has participated in multiple group exhibitions at galleries and artist run centres in Berlin, Vancouver and San José, Costa Rica; where she is represented by Galeria Des Pacio. Two recurring concerns in Carranza’s practice are the investigation of language and appropriation as an aesthetic strategy. Her work often focuses on the historical and cultural specificities of her source materials, exploring the tensions between privilege and impoverishment. Carranza will begin her MFA at the University of British Columbia this coming Fall.

Mark DeLong (b. Fredericton, New Brunswick) is a self-taught Vancouver-based artist working in a variety of mediums including drawing, painting, sculpture and video. His work has been presented at Cooper Cole Gallery, Toronto; Colette, Paris; Bee Studios, Tokyo; Spencer-Brownstone Gallery, NY; Abel Neue Kunst Gallery, Berlin; Perugi Art Contemporenea, Padova, Italy; Museum of London Ontario; MOCCA, Toronto; LES Gallery, Vancouver; Giant Robot, NY; Little Cakes, NY; and Hunter and Cook in Toronto.
His work has been seen in Border Crossings and Canadian Art Magazine. He also has published books with Nieves Books, Switzerland, Seems Books and TV Books in New York.

Lucien Durey (b. Regina, Saskatchewan) is a Vancouver-based artist who explores mythology observed and imagined as the son of American expatriates in Canada. Working with performance, assemblage and digital processes, he draws from popular culture and his own genealogy to deliver personal and enigmatic representations of regional selfhood. His work has been exhibited at the Helen Pitt Gallery, Vancouver; Lucky's Gallery, Vancouver, and the Leroy Neiman Gallery at Columbia University School of the Arts, New York. He holds a BFA from Emily Carr University.

Access Gallery gratefully acknowledges the Canada Council for the Arts, BC Arts Council, City of Vancouver, our members and volunteers. Access is a member of the Pacific Association of Artist Run Centres.