Jake Klein-Waller: The Land Persists

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Jake Klein Waller, "The Land Persists," 2017

The Land Persists by Jake Klein-WallerLocation: Lightbox Studio at Arts Commons

Artist reception at Happenings #9 on the Mezzanine Level of ArtsCommons on Monday, August 18 from 6-9 pm

During Klein-Waller’s three-month project in the Lightbox Studio space, he will recreate historical objects from European settlement in Canada. As he builds this work, he will simultaneously represent himself as a romanticized fictional character from the era, the Cowboy, building tools only to have them crumble.

The Land Persists endeavors to lead observers to question our relationship to landscape and the history that surrounds it.

For all the settlements in Canada that exist today, how many of them have failed?” asks Klein-Waller. “Farms reclaimed by the prairie, houses left to the woods. What are the histories that lie buried in a century and a half of dirt? Do they tell tales into the early psychological struggle on the land? What ghosts of settlement haunt this place?”

The Lightbox Studio at Arts Commons is an experimental studio and exhibition space that promotes studio-based projects, running in 2-3 month intervals.

Artist Biographies

Jake Klein-Waller is an emerging artist based in Calgary, Alberta. Using an interdisciplinary approach, Jake works in performance, video, sculpture, drawing, photography, and installation, to explore the conceptual frameworks of philosophy, poetics, literature, and personal mythology. Subsequent to graduating from the Alberta College of Art + Design in 2014, Jake has participated in a number of group exhibitions, festivals, and residencies, including the Mountain Standard Time Performative Art Festival; a Calgary Board of Education residency where he worked alongside students at the Capitol Hill Elementary School; the Stride Gallery’s Could it Be; We've Surpassed Material Expectations, and Contemporary Calgary's emerging artist exhibition Next 2015. In 2016, Jake has participated in a residency at Connexion ARC in Fredericton, New Brunswick and was residence in Reykjavik, Iceland at SIM's Seljavegur Residency during the month of April, 2016.