INTO THE WOODS: ETCHINGS BY GEORGE RAAB
George Raab
Central Gallery
October 19 to December 31, 2013
Curated by Art Gallery of Peterborough, Carla Garnet
Ontario-based artist George Raab’s practice spans four decades and is grounded in portraying the wooded world. From his early etchings to present day photo-based prints, Raab’s work portrays the iconic Canadian forest, emphasizing the difference between short-term and long-lasting perceptions of nature.
Using digital photographs as the foundation for his intaglio prints, Raab’s imagery reveals expanses of treed space that can be scrutinized from many perspectives–technically, spiritually, politically, and aesthetically. On a more personal level, these works can be reflected upon as metaphors for subjective experience. They provide the immersive experience of being in the woods, while also implying a certain fragility and vulnerability. Raab’s work asks viewers to leap between a number of constructs, especially between controlled nature understood as landscape and uncontrolled nature often referred to as wilderness.
Raab’s scenic prints rely on contrasting relationships. They constitute the interactions between colour and line, representation and abstraction, authenticity and fiction. These works bridge the gap between standing “here” and seeing what is “there.” His quiet though spectacular views of trees use the vanishing point for their scenic value.
The exhibition features variations on the forest subject as much as it presents the artist’s use of contemporary and traditional printmaking technologies in order to explore how formal, conceptual, and liminal processes come to animate the printmaker’s depictions of time and place. This combination of aesthetic, formal, theoretical, and practical concerns is revealed in a series of vitrines that include excerpts sourced from the artist’s photographs, technological apparatus, as well as the forest floor’s memento-mori.
Generously sponsored by New Gold Inc.
George Raab
Forest Snow
intaglio print with watercolour
Collection of the Art Gallery of Peterborough
