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Transcending Here

Miruna Dragan (Calgary, AB), Noxious Sector (Victoria, BC)
Runs from July 9, 2010 through to August 5, 2010
Opening reception: Friday, July 9 at 8:00 PM

The artists in Transcending Here offer alternative interpretations of what it means to be in the world.

Miruna Dragan’s The Fertile Void, is an on-going series of actions on golf courses – a context rich with numerous political and environmental implications – upon which the artist’s work poetically responds. Dragan will bring her two most recent installments in the series, The Fertile Void V: The Cloud of Unknowing and The Fertile Void VII: Contrapuntal Erratics. inside the gallery this summer, which is based upon the anonymous 14th century Christian mystical text called The Cloud of Unknowing that proposes one should spiritually reside on a plane between two strata: “the cloud of unknowing” above, forever obscuring an understanding of God, and “the cloud of forgetting” below, elevating believers above the finite and terrestrial.

Noxious Sector brings their “formalized forum for informal inquiry” to Calgary, with Magnetically Inclined. This project is an exploration of the relationship between cognition and high-powered rare-earth magnets, based upon the neuropsychologist Dr. Michael Persinger’s apparatus, the “god helmet”. Taking artistic liberties with both his method and context, Magnetically Inclined seeks imaginative social application of magnetic stimulation for creative, humorous, and speculative inquiry.

Miruna Dragan

Miruna Dragan is a Romanian-American visual artist with an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (2001). She has attended residencies at Skowhegan,Vermont Studio Center, Art Farm, and The Banff Centre and has exhibited in the US, The Netherlands, Romania, Germany, Mexico, Greece, and Canada. Dragan is also a member of the international artist collective Unconstrained Growth Into the Void and is currently permanent faculty in Drawing at the Alberta College of Art + Design.

Noxious Sector

Noxious Sector is a formalized forum for informal inquiry. Consisting of Ted Hiebert and Doug Jarvis and dedicated to the exploration of questions of the imaginative, the paranormal and the absurd, Noxious Sector attempts to redefine the meaning of artistic possibility through extended propositions that challenge consensual norms while also provoking stimulating forums for dialogue and discourse. Noxious Sector projects take the form of performances, curatorial initiatives and artistic collaborations. Past projects include the “World Telekinesis Competition” (Ministry of Casual Living, 2009; Deluge Contemporary, 2008), “Magnetically Inclined” (Fifty-fifty Arts Collective, 2008) and “Dowsing for Failure” (Open Space, 2007). These and other projects can be viewed online at www.noxioussector.net