According to gallery director Rebecca Heidenberg, “The work in the exhibition contains a third order of meaning, beyond the obvious and the symbolic.” Coined by Roland Barthes in a discussion about Russian film director Sergei Eisenstein, the term “the third meaning” is a “signifier without a signified”: a representation without a direct, material source. It exists “where another language begins. The third meaning – theoretically locatable but not describable can (now) be seen as the passage from language to significance.” The “third meaning” emerges from and with the viewer to bridge the object of art with its sublime qualities: an experience moving us, however uniquely.


Pushing the boundaries of media, several artists defy categorization. Paul Edmunds – With a meditative concentration and a unique vision, Edmunds’ practice includes sculpture, video, drawing and printmaking. In “Sleeve,” multicolored neoprene from discarded wetsuits is quilted to create a sculptural installation. Kirstine Roepstorff – Recent collages incorporate a variety of media across time and place. Bordering on sculpture, her work juxtaposes photographic, archival and abstract elements on multi-layered surfaces. Parastou Forouhar – Through performance, photography, digital media and animation, a wealth of controversial subject matter is explored. Her work lies between the handmade and the mechanical, the beautiful and the horrific. Fredrik Färg – Design is often the result of hybrid forms. Theatrical pieces contain a sense of history within a contemporary aesthetic. In his “Re:Cover” series, Färg replaces the backs of classic chairs with whimsical felt forms inspired by classic suit tailoring. Daniel Escobar - Exploring issues of representation and perception, he employs various interventions such as puncturing holes and layering imagery to distort and recreate found images and objects from the urban landscape. In his series “Perto Demais”, he extracts details from massive publicity posters, erasing their context in the process, and eventually transforming them in his studio.

Grounded in the context of tradition and history, several other artists expose a “third-meaning” through painting. Wolfgang Ellenrieder – A variety of sources including diverse archives, stock photography as well as his own photography, collage and models are the foundation of compositions situated in unlikely spaces that are simultaneously figurative and abstract. Rick Leong – Interweaving elements from classical Chinese imagery and traditional Canadian landscape painting among other sources, imaginative dreamscapes emerge through layers of history and memory. Dante Horoiwa – Imagery is found within a disciplined, personal narrative. Influenced by a variety of sources including Brazilian urban art and his Japanese heritage, the work employs a unique language to communicate universal ideas. Micah Ganske – A painstaking technique developed by Ganske involves a paint staining process on muslin which renders the brushstrokes essentially invisible even as they delineate the tiniest details of his grandfather’s wrinkles, the striking colors of a landscape at the edge of the world or a bird’s eye view of abandoned cities blanketed with the shadows of industrial machinery.

Daniel Escobar. Permeável VII (Série Perto demais) (detail), 2007.
Mixed media on paper. 78.7 x 78.7 inches.  Click to see larger image