Inter Mundos
November 30, 2023 to January 27, 2024
Megan Klak
Daniel Evans
Marilène Oliver
A trio of Edmonton artists explore the complex relationship that we navigate with our current digital technologies. The once fixed boundary between the physical and the digital realms is becoming more porous, carving out a third, intersecting space – a space between worlds - an Inter Mundos. Megan Klak, Daniel Evans and Marilène Oliver navigate this boundary through painting, printmaking and virtual reality art installations.
Megan Klak’s large scale oil paintings capture moments of isolation – figures lost in the entrancing glow of their devices. The interior worlds of these figures are a mystery, inaccessible to the observer. Through an encroaching darkness, Klak visualises the loneliness and disconnection that is increasingly prevalent in our society.
Daniel Evans’ work homes in on user data – the digital breadcrumbs that we leave scattered in our wake as we journey through both our digital and physical lives. This wealth of information is ubiquitously collected, leaving individuals vulnerable to coercive control. Evans’ elegant prints and virtual reality works engage with the visual language of folklore as an apt metaphor for this inescapable relationship.
Marilène Oliver’s My Data Body is a fully immersive virtual reality artwork, transporting viewers into a floating otherworldly environment. They are met with an interactive digitized body composed of webbing lines of text, data and poetry. Oliver makes visible her own digital and physical self. Her medical scans are merged with social media and biometrics data and the experience is enhanced with poetry written by J.R. Carpenter and soundscapes by Scott Smallwood and Stephan Moore.
Klak, Evans and Oliver offer a complex and nuanced view of our modern times and the growing realm where the physical and digital collide.
Image credits: Megan Klak, Small in the Dark, oil on canvas and synthetic lace, 60x60”, 2021; Daniel Evans, Atenoux IV, digital print, screen print, monoprint, chine cholle on Honen and Hahnemuhle paper, 36x46”, 2019; Marilène Oliver, Scott Smallwood, J.R. Carpenter and Stephan Moore, My Data Body, still from VR artwork, 2022.
