Tracy McMenemy | Folded Earth

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Tracy McMenemy, "Reform," 2021

archival pigment on paper, 36x36 in. Courtesy of Tracy McMenemy.

Opening Saturday March 4, 2:00 - 5:00

Folded Earth series engages and questions our relationships with nature and technology. These sparse images of Folded Earth highlight the focus on materiality, colour, abstraction and spatiality. 

Folded Earth bridges Tracy McMenemy's studio practice with the element of field work. The use of an iPad frees her to respond artistically to the digital photographs with which she documents her natural surroundings, without leaving them. Here is a key to her deeper interrogation between organic nature and manufactured technology. While reliance on digital media of this current process facilitates a more immediate response to remote surroundings, we are still seeing the real and the unreal in these works. 

The photographic source material responds directly to nature. It is then morphed into natural forms through spontaneous physical gesture, but not without the specific digital platform that facilitates this process. These images will take their place among the many images we receive through media, both online and in physical urban spaces. Is a tree from a source photograph still a tree after details from that photograph have been transformed, and placed in a new compositional space? Is there an agenda behind this as there is behind so many visuals we receive each day? As technology continues to evolve, and replace human tasking, what are the fundamentally human activities that it can not replace, and that must guide it? 

While Folded Earth prompts such complex questions, the series answers with simplicity. Each piece is an invitation to behold a unique moment, which is a central part of what the artist herself is doing with these works.