Directing attention to the role of materiality in contemporary art, flip has approached four young, international artists whose practices already engaged with material as vessels for narrative. Recognizing that the material used in the production of art whether pedestrian and industrial or precious and rare are never neutral elements. Flip is curious about how specific materials that have been endowed with value and meaning by way of cultural history can transfer their attributes to the work and objects that they become a part of. Flip has collaborated with the artists in the exhibition How to Make a Delicious Tea in order to select and reproduce images of each artist's previously exhibited works onto silk-hangings. This gesture is at once a documentation, translation and discourse. Four diverse works are each imbued with the intrinsic value of the storied textile of silk and their three-dimensional forms are experienced as two-dimensional emblems. This change in the configuration of each work continues an ongoing conversation in contemporary art and material culture on how value is determined.
- Denise Ryner . Toronto 2011