While my last project involved the interaction of the monsoon rains with my paintings, my new project incorporates the effects of ice and snow. For Project Europa I am freezing a series of paintings in a lake in the Laurentians. The white, frozen plane of the surface ice serves as the white wall in the gallery; instead of hanging paintings on a wall, the paintings are suspended underneath the viewer's feet, waiting to be discovered. Like an explorer on a frozen world, the viewer needs to search for the paintings which will be sometimes frozen deep into the ice, sometimes closer to the surface, sometimes covered in snow. The transparency and colour of the lake-ice greatly influences the look and feel of the paintings during the winter, while they are suspended in the lake. In spring, after the thaw, I plan to recuperate the paintings and observe what effect the ice had on the paints, the canvas, the strings used, etc. A great amount of experimentation is involved in this project, the outcome can be controlled only to a point - just as I gave my paintings to the Singaporean monsoon rains, I am giving my paintings to the Canadian winter and see what develops.
I am calling this series Project Europa after Jupiter's moon Europa - a fridgid, ice-covered world which harbours liquid water under its frozen surface, and the possibility of life. Each canvas suspended in the ice features a lifeform which developed millions of years ago here on Earth, but which appears alien: protozoae, bacteria, and strangest of all the fossils of extinct life-forms found in the Burgess Shale (see: Stephen Jay Gould, "Wonderful Life", 1989). The process of evolution terminated some of those life-forms here on Earth, but how would evolution play out on Europa? Would "Odaria" or "Anomalocaris" have flourished? These microscopic, ancient creatures appear both alien and familiar. Imagine pushing the snow aside a plane of ice and discovering "Amiskwia"! We can't yet go to these far-away worlds, but as an artist I can recreate the experience of discovery.
During the winter, I am from time to time taking photographs of the project site to document the process of the successive layering of ice and snow. By uncovering the artwork frozen in the lake, which includes manipulation of the snow and rubbing and scraping of the ice, I'm also changing the way the painting appears, so in effect I'm "painting" with the ice and snow. The gestures of the discoverer are also the gestures of the artist.
For exhibition after the thaw, I will show in tandem the paintings (hopefully) recuperated from the lake as well as the series of photographs featuring the canvases frozen in ice.
