Craig Gilbert | [email protected]
Back in Jasper and armed with modular art, Michael Flisak is turning it up for his latest exhibition.
The founding member of the Jasper Artist Guild opens Out of Thin Air on Friday. The gala starts at 6 p.m. and the artist will be speaking at about 7 p.m.
Flisak remembers the days of the JAG hosting satellite exhibitions of their works at a variety of spots around town until they found something of a base in the old fire hall.
“I went from door to door getting money and endorsements from people at first,” he said. “We had satellite galleries and we had a little studio up at Building 52 at one point where people could do some work and that’s how it started.”
Being able to exhibit now in the space at the gallery is a realization of the dream he and the other JAG founders had when they formed.
“Artists can showcase their work as a coherent whole rather than just little pieces here and there on a wall with other people. You can transform a space; Rico did it last year.”
He’s made a career of using and reusing materials in different pieces. That continuum is palpable as he moves around his backyard log-cabin shop after five years away from Jasper, where he’s lived on-and-off since 1977.
“There’s a couple of pieces in the studio that have recycled material on the piece,” he said. “I’ve always done it to some degree but here I’ve kind of done it full-force. Because of this modular aspect and this multifaceted way of working, it allows me to have all kinds of material to recycle.”
The anchors of his new exhibit are designed to be rotated (by the artist, not you, please don’t touch) to reveal different motifs.
“Everything that ties into my work has to do with dislocation or relocation, mismatching things where things don’t quite line up but then they do,” he said. “Juxtaposing ideas.”
He picks up one of the 16 cubes that makes up one of his floor pieces and rotates it to reveal five other paintings on its other faces.
“With this, I took it a step further and created modular forms,” he explains. “Because they’re cubes, that means there’s two dimensions to each side before I even put any paint on it. So, two times six. These things are meant to be a puzzle, so interactive.”
Flisak enjoys painting things that couldn’t possibly exist in the physical world. The other anchor floor piece of the show consists of triangular columns with elephants painted on one face. When turned out from the centre, they form a star of David. The elephants go from being outside to being inside the circus.
“That’s why this is the carousel for the circus, but the whole thing is a circus, really,” he said. “The whole space is a thing of wonder for people.”
