Art Metropole

31 Mar. 2007

Opening for Nichola Feldman-Kiss's Mean Body and Classically Bound

Artist

Nichola Feldman-Kiss

Time

2 pm - 5 pm

Art Metropole is pleased to present ­nicholafeldman-kiss:meanbodyclassicallybound12030223:11.16 and other works from the mean body database

The exhibition features a giant book which is one of a series of works made since 2001 from her mean body database of three-dimensional whole body laser scans. Following an intensive performance of diet and body training, feldman-kiss created a comprehensive database of 3 dimensional scans of her body shape. The artist has used her shape database as source material for the creation of numerous performance documents including photography, sculpture, video, book, and installation objects all of which investigate the performative self within the traditions of the self portrait and figurative representation. classically bound, will be contextualized by other works from the mean body database including a crowd of one self, i absolutely know i exist and the chimaera set.

classically bound (2005-6) is a volume of 7,662 pages, published by runaway bunny, listing the numerical data that describes the 203,144 triangles that define the space occupied by feldman-kiss’ body surface. classically bound is a numerically accurate representation of the artists body while posed in the standard erect posture used for scientific and technical study of human body geometry measuring 12.1 Megabytes of x,y, and z coordinate points (x indicating horizontal, y depth and z vertical). The absurdly large volume is 44cm thick and bound in pigskin color matched to the artist’s own skin tone. The books front and spine binding panels are embossed with the file directory title.

During the exhibition Art Metropole will be selling a 48-page illustrated catalogue published in conjunction with nichola feldman-kiss’ 2006 solo exhibition at Carleton University Art Gallery in Ottawa. nichola feldman-kiss:meanbody features an essay by Dr. Kim Sawchuk, Associate Professor of Communications Studies at Concordia University, with a forward by Diana Nemiroff and design by Mark Timmings.

Nichola Feldman-Kiss is an artist researching corporeality, identity and autobiography. Feldman-Kiss implicates self reflexive narratives in her performative exploration of body, gaze, subjectivity, sociality and consciousness. Her multi-disciplinary installations, performances, and objects are characterized by pristine and minimal elegance, subtly and subversively disturbing that which we take for granted, asking us to reconsider basic questions about being individual, collective and embodied.

Her work is concerned with relations between the every day performance of self, identity and technologies of the body. Her work examines the body as a site for the cultural projection of standards of normalcy. She is fascinated by techno-scientific method and systems for measuring and knowing bodies, and how knowledge of the body is applied socially, scientifically and autobiographically. Her focused exploration of the analog/digital body has inspired her to work within the scientific community of human shape variability research at Canada’s National Research Council since 2001. Feldman-Kiss has a deep interest in the photographic as a perspective of observation and gaze as well as a technology of preservation.

Nichola Feldman-Kiss completed her MFA at California Institute for the Arts. She has presented her work to audiences in Canada, the United States, Mexico, the UK and Italy. She lives and works in Ottawa, Canada.

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