Name: Matrix Index 2 / Gold
Brand: Colleen Wolstenholme
Rating: 5 (6 reviews)

Matrix Index 2 / Gold

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About the Item

Colleen Wolstenholme’s interest in the brain has flowed from her longstanding practice of making meticulous impressions of pharmaceutical drugs, such as Xanax, Prozac and Adderal, creating larger-than-life plaster pills and minute gold and silver cast beads to be worn as jewelry. Such pills, of course, work by adjusting the function of nerve cells to alter the chemistry of the brain. In her recent work Hexagraphy, shown at Art Mûr as the culmination of her PhD research at York University, Wolstenholme takes the hippocampus as her subject – the region of the brain that is vital to both short and long-term memory, as well as spatial navigation. The hippocampus is home to place and grid cells, which fire in a hexagonal pattern to create a cognitive map that allows the body to orient itself in space. Hexagraphy is composed of a topography of welded steel hexagons, upon which Wolstenholme has melted a white polystyrene sheet. The hardened plastic is then removed to create two separately installed sculptures – the now-redundant supporting grid and the crumpled screen, backlit with small blue and green LED lights on the gallery floor. The screen appears wet, warped and fleshy, perhaps like surface of the brain, and the lights flicker in a pattern that evokes the hexagonal neural field of the hippocampus. Yet the work also opens itself up to a variety of other visual affiliations: infrared projections of weather patterns on a landscape, an electrified reflecting pool, a magic carpet. The exhibition title Apropos Obsolescence refers to Wolstenholme’s approach to technology: the pixels that comprise Hexagraphy support a ratio of approximately 35 pixels per square foot – a resolution that stands in hyperbolic contrast to the compulsion towards ever-finer imaging technology. An affection for the mathematical constancy of the grid is palpable throughout Wolstenholme’s practice. She has described the pleasurable, calming effect of drawing elaborate hexagonal patterns. But there is equally a sense that she tests the limits of strict Euclidian geometry, infusing elements of randomness, as well as references to bodily phenomena, into her process. Wolstenholme builds her grids according to a set of pre-determined rules, cutting steel rods of relatively, but not precisely, the same size and then welding them back together in a hexagonal pattern. These variances are what produce the rough-hewn, rippling quality of Wolstenholme’s geometric matrixes. Her labour therefore becomes an act of performative automatism and the mistakes are built into the method. This element of contingency is crucial for Wolstenholme. The technique of welding, managing electrical force to alter such inflexible material, is physically demanding and there is an element of the absurd in undertaking this labour of cutting through steel rods only to reassemble them again. The sculpture is thus a residue of this method, which encompasses both structure and flow, the precision of practice and contingent outcome.

Creator:
Colleen Wolstenholme (1963, Canadian)
Creation Year:
2017
Dimensions:
Height: 26 in (66.04 cm)Width: 26 in (66.04 cm)
Medium:
Polystyrene
Movement & Style:
Contemporary
Period:
2010-
Condition:
Gallery Location:
Montreal, CA
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU4763344643

Shop All Colleen Wolstenholme

Colleen Wolstenholme

Best known for the jewelry and figurative sculptures based on a range of pharmaceutical drugs that garnered her widespread notoriety in the late 1990s, prolific artist Colleen Wolstenholme has also created abstract drawings and other works over the years that continue to stimulate dialogue and attract attention.

Born in 1963 in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Wolstenholme became interested in visual arts while studying fashion design at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. After earning her bachelor’s degree in fine arts in 1986, she continued her studies and received her master’s degree from the State University of New York at New Paltz in 1992, where she specialized in metal and jewelry arts.

Throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s, Wolstenholme worked with a range of mediums such as jewelry, sculpture, digital collage, painting and embroidery to create art that served as social criticism. Beginning in the mid-1990s, she made oversized plaster-cast sculptures and silver or gold jewelry that took the form of antidepressant pills and capsules in order to address several issues, including the fact that drugs are prescribed at disproportionate rates to women versus men, that the healthcare industry is overly reliant on prescribing drugs, and that anyone in treatment and on a course of medication is generally made to feel less healthy than those who aren’t. Wolstenholme’s provocative work made headlines in the Guardian, the Los Angeles Times and Psychology Today.

Wolstenholme’s art has also seen her unpacking her interest in the human brain. This is demonstrated in such abstract sculptures as Deviant Grid, the “Matrix Index” series and Spatial Anomaly in which she depicts the brain’s neurons. In her “Hyperobjects” series, Wolstenholme also focuses on systems that “humans have little power over but control and constrain us.” These include figurative drawings and abstract drawings of wind patterns, titled with geographical coordinates.

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