Christian Holstad: Corrections

New collage work by the American artist is presented in his third exhibition with the gallery.

Corrections looks at various types of borders, boundaries and constraints in our environment that impact our lives, from the political and governmental to the social and personal. Borders and boundaries can be physical, like the gated communities of suburban towns, or unseen, like the surveillance of intelligence agencies including the National Security Agency and the Government Communications Headquarters. In recent years phone-hacking scandals and leaks from whistleblowers like Edward Snowden have led to a fundamental questioning of personal privacy. In light of these revelations there has been a reassessment of what constitutes safety and threat and a reassertion of the rights of the individual in the community.

Working with hand-cut paper collage, Holstad builds up his material in layers. A central focus of Corrections is a large collage work comprising eight separate panels spelling out the word ENTRANCE in reverse. Each collaged letter is made of metallic paper that has been meticulously hand cut to resemble chain-link fencing. The reversal of the human-scale letters acts to place the observer inside the fence. The reflective quality of the metallic paper enables viewers to see their own image, directly implicating them in Holstad's landscape.